The most hated letter for overachievers

Are you one of us?

Do you revel in the pursuit of obliterating the finish line and then just running for a few more miles?

Does the thought of achievement-hunting sound like fun?

Are lists just starting points for you?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, then you are an overachiever.

The letter “F” is your least favorite in the alphabet, and a negative sign makes you cringe.

Here are seven “F’s” that you can use as a springboard for inspiration to share about anything.

Fun

This is a no-brainer.

Write about what tickles your fancy. When I started out on this crazy endeavor, I was a gaming YouTuber. I wrote scripts for my videos that centered around different strategies, hints, and guides for a game that I put hundreds of hours into.

I had terrible connection with my audience, but it made things a lot easier for me when I was editing week after week.

Another way to look at it is to write for fun. I err more on this side at the moment. I’ve gradually come to realize that if I want to make money from this craft, then I have to spend a good chunk of it in the marketing side. I’ve been slowly learning more about that aspect, but it’s not exactly something I want to focus on at the moment.

If you don’t enjoy writing about it or talking about it, then you likely won’t stick with it for long.

Fears

Writing out your fears is a powerful way to face them.

Tim Ferriss gave a TedX talk about defining them rather than defining your goals. If you’re willing to punch it in the face, then it’s easier to move through them and have them more as being next to you rather than in front of you.

I used to be afraid of clowns.

No joke. I hated them. They used to freak me out, and Stephen King’s “It” didn’t help the matter one bit. There’s a certain irony to that fact isn’t there? He wrote an entire story about an inter-dimensional being that torments a group of kids by taking the form of a clown…an entire book!

It wasn’t until I got older that I got over that fear.

Clowns are still not my favorite thing about being at carnivals, but at least now I can see past all the paint and goofy outfits and relate to the person who is beneath it all. These guys are just wanting to entertain others with their goofy side and a few cheap laughs.

Still freaky, though.

Faces

This covers a lot of areas.

It could be the faces of your mentors, teachers, friends, lovers, pets, and more. You could choose instances in which you watched them change in an instant or over years. You could describe the features of those you hold most dear.

For instance, watching my children’s faces as they grow up has been a miraculous process.

They both have huge heads.

Even as infants and toddlers, they tottered around the house like a bunch of lollipops. There was a point in time where they had more bruises on their foreheads than on their legs because they just kept knocking into things face-first.

My oldest has dimples that pop up when he gives that toothless smile of his. He doesn’t show any teeth when this happens, but it’s not a fake Duchesne smile either. These grins go all the way up to his eyes.

The eyes are about the only thing that give away his mixed heritage these days. Funny how Asian and Caucasian features seem to be in a tug-of-war with each other all the time.

Fables

Storytelling is an art.

It’s not easy to simply tell a good story. Telling a joke is the start of this process. If you can’t tell a good joke, then doing this is going to be a tough road. It’s part of the reason that I decided to move away from being a YouTuber.

I sucked at telling stories.

All of my videos are helpful for completing the game that I focused my content around, but it was delivered in a clinical, sterile, academic way. There was no struggle, no stakes, no connection.

All “ands”, no “buts”.

There’s no story if you are just sharing the sequence. You need some tension so that you’re pulling the reader along. Otherwise, it’s just leading a horse to water.

Futures

No, I’m not talking about financial ones you see every day.

I suppose you could write about that as well, but I’m talking about dreams and aspirations. I’ve mentioned more than a few times that I plan on bundling all my writing in to eBooks, longer chapters for a full-length book, and using all my thoughts as material for short-form posts and videos.

Those are all in the future, dreams of mine of becoming a “real” writer someday.

I’ve also talked about what I hope for my family, my friends, my communities that I’m involved in. I haven’t shared those in-depth, but being a teacher, a mentor, and a leader in different aspects as my kids grow are becoming more important to me.

Think about what you are reaching for in life and share about different facets of them.

Familiarities

The mundane has its place in writing and communicating.

There’s a simple, but tough exercise that you can do with anything that is front of you.

Take five minutes and just start writing everything that comes to mind when you have an object in front of you. Start with what it looks like, how it feels, smells, tastes (if appropriate), what it reminds you of, where it came from or how you acquired it (if it’s yours), what captures your attention about it.

If you can do that with anything, then you’ve got something to talk about with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

This is familiarity. It’s making a connection with objects, people, ideas. It’s taking anything that you initially might think of as foreign to you and making it a part of your existence rather than it being an intruder into your presence. Take something that feels uncomfortable and make it commonplace. Normalize the concept and incorporate it into your surroundings.

When it feels familiar, it doesn’t seem threatening anymore.

Fascinations

As with the previous point, this is its opposite in a sense.

This aspect is a bit larger in context, though. It’s the saying “follow your curiosity”. Explore and share what interest you, how you stumbled upon the discipline, what mystery or question you are trying to answer, how you hope to grow from learning more about it.

Obsessions are born from this pursuit.

Only the ignorant and the small-minded can’t think of anything to talk about. My kids jabber about anything and everything because it’s all interesting to them. As adults, we tend to abstract away a lot of our environment because it’s become part of the background noise in our daily survival activities. Mortgages, bills, the next birthday party your kids need presents for, these take over and crowd out any semblance of wonder.

Children exercise that muscle that seems to atrophy in grownups.

It’s the key to staying engaged and youthful. If you can’t see the fascinating things in life, then you will cease to have interest in moving. You get stiff. You get old.

You will die from lack of interest.

Just this exercise alone

I could easily go on and on with all of these 7 “F’s”.

The digital heirloom is my answer to exploring all of them.

• Fun

• Fears

• Faces

• Fables

• Futures

• Familiarities

• Fascinations

In the greater context, life is composed of every one of these.

You have no excuse not to share them.

Which of these are your favorite to talk about? If you’re a content creator like me, then which one is your content centered around?