The Effortless Content Creation System:

For the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make content creation easier and more effortless.

This is what I’ve come up with. 👇

This system is based on the Zettelkasten system, with a few of my own modifications.

It’s inspired by @soenke_ahrens’ book, How to Take Smart Notes, as well as The Atomic Idea Framework by @indigosblog .

It all starts with what you consume:

Good output starts with good input.

It might be a book, a podcast, a video, or a course.

The first step is to take notes on the key takeaways, lessons, and AHA moments.

But, the magic of the system lies in how you take those notes. ✍️

My note-taking tool of choice is @RoamResearch 

The magic of Roam is the ability to use hashtags on a paragraph (or bullet point) level.

This is what makes this system possible.

I start with creating a new page for the book, podcast, article, etc. I’m consuming.

On that page, I write down the ideas and lessons that resonated with me.

Here's how I capture each note: 📝

Isolate The Idea

Each idea is captured as clearly and concisely as possible.

Sometimes, it’s only a sentence long. Other times, it’s a paragraph.

My goal is to capture the essence of the idea so I can isolate it and use it like a LEGO block in my future writing.

Write for Others

I try to write each idea as if it was going to be published.

I do my best to make it clear and somewhat polished.

This allows me to use it in my writing future writing without too much editing.

Tag Each Idea

The beauty of Roam is that it allows me to apply multiple hashtags to each idea.

For example, I could tag an idea with “writing,” “productivity,” “motivation,” etc.

Eventually, I end up with a library of ideas from a wide array of sources for each tag.

When it’s time to write, I no longer need to brainstorm ideas.

All I do is open Roam, pick a tag, and browse through the collection of ideas I’ve accumulated.

From there, I choose an idea (or a couple) and use it as the seed of inspiration for my piece.

Easy and effortless!

The beauty of this system is the hard work of idea generation, research, and thinking is done way before ever sitting down to create.

All I do is consume information and take notes.

When I sit down, everything is ready for me.

All that’s left to do is arrange and polish.

Thanks for reading!

What did you think?

If you have any questions, leave me a comment or DM me—I'd love to hear from you!

Are you a new or aspiring creator?

Every Sunday, I send a short weekly newsletter where I share the best tools, ideas, and resources for creators to grow their audience, master their craft and start making money online.

link is in my bio!

My Effortless Content Creation System

Most people don’t understand the TRUE purpose of work.

Here's the truth about "Good Work" and how to find it: 

🧵👇

We've been lied to about the true purpose of work.

From childhood, we've been told that work is about making money.

Our parents would tell us to, “get good grades so we get a good job so we make lots of money.”

“Work” became synonymous with “money.”

Here's why that's bad:

According to a study from Gettysburg College, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime.

That’s a lot of time. 

If we’re going to spend a third of our life working, wouldn't it make sense to choose work that does more than just pay the bills?

Work can be good for us in many different ways:

✅  Work can make us better people.

✅  Work can allow us to pursue our interests and passions.

✅  Work can improve our relationships and family life.

✅  Work can make us happier through meaningful contributions to others.

Your career choice is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in your life. 

If you choose work that’s not aligned with your values and interests, you’ll be miserable. 

But, if you find work aligned with your goals, values, and preferences, your work will become play.

So, how can you find the right work for you? 

Howard Gardener, author of Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, has a formula to find your perfect work:

Align your Excellence (what you’re good at), what you love doing, and your ethical sense (what is meaningful to you).

Hyrum Smith has two more questions to find the right work for you:

1. If money was no object—if all jobs paid the same—what would you be doing then?

2. If I didn’t HAVE to do ANYTHING—if I didn’t have to earn an income, and all of my needs were covered—what would I WANT to do?

You spend a third of your life working.

You might as well spend that time in a meaningful and enjoyable way.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn—I’d love to hear from you!

If you enjoyed this post:

1.  Follow me @MarkShpuntov for more posts like this.
2.  Share this thread with someone you think would enjoy it.
3.  Connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn—I’d love to hear from you!

See you in the comments!

The True Purpose of Work

Building an audience on social media is a WASTE OF TIME unless you do this ONE thing.

THREAD 🧵👇

If you’re a creator with a following of any size on social media, you already know the harsh truth:

Your audience is not your own.

You are at the mercy of the algorithm.

You might have 10,000 followers, but your posts only get shown to a tiny fraction of them.

That's insane.


You worked hard and built your audience, and now, you can’t even reach them.

So, what should you do?

You need to OWN your audience.

And the way to do that is to get people off of social media as soon as possible and onto a platform you own and control:

Email.

An email list gives you unrestricted access to your audience.

If you have 10,000 subscribers, your email gets delivered to each and every one.

Having an email list gives you the power to send a flood of targeted traffic anywhere with a click of a button.

Social media is great for building an audience. But it’s a terrible way to communicate with that audience.

Your number one goal should be to get as many of your social media followers off the platform and onto your email list.

But, you can't just ask people for their email...

A weekly newsletter solves the two biggest problems of email marketing:

1.  How to get people to join your email list
2.  How to get people to actually open your emails

Here's how:

People don’t just randomly give their email addresses to strangers on the Internet. 

But they’re more than happy to provide their emails to receive valuable information they’re interested in.

A weekly newsletter filled with value is a great lead magnet to get people to opt in.

Having a list of people is not enough; they must also be engaged enough to open and read your emails.

A weekly newsletter builds a relationship by regularly providing value. 

If each email is full of value, your audience will look forward and be excited to open and read them.

The easiest way to start a newsletter?

Curate valuable content.

Save your audience time by curating the best ideas, tools, and resources you come across each week.

Add your thoughts about each resource and you've got yourself a newsletter!

Why Every Creator NEEDS a Newsletter

How To Quadruple The Reach Of Your Tweets:

Even the best content requires distribution.

Reposting your Tweets on other platforms multiplies your reach with little effort.

It's a no-brainer!

Here's how to easily repurpose your Tweets for the different Social Media Platforms:

LINKEDIN

1. Copy the text and share it as a Post.
2. Screenshot the tweet and share it as an Image.
3. For multi-tweet threads, create an image carousel and share it as a Document.

TIKTOK + YOUTUBE SHORTS

Create a simple video in @canva:

1. Use stock video as background.
2. Paste your tweet as an overlay.
3. Share on TT & YT

INSTAGRAM

1. Use the same method as TikTok & Shorts to create a simple Reel.
2. Screenshot the tweet and share it as a post.
3. Create an IG story using your tweet.
4. Post longer content as an image carousel.

You've already done the hard work of creating; might as well get the most bang for your buck by getting it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

It's like playing the lottery: Each additional ticket increases your chances of winning.

You never know what will go viral.

If you're curious to see how I do this, check out my social media platforms for examples of each one of these. (@MarkShpuntov)

As for which tools you need, I use @canva for pretty much all my graphic design needs.

DM me if you have any questions or need any assistance.

How To Grow Faster By Repurposing Your Content

How to grow your audience from scratch (3 things new creators must do every day)

If you're a new or aspiring content creator, there are 3 things you must do every single day to begin growing your audience:

1.  Create
2.  Engage
3.  Consume

Here's why: 

🧵

1. Create

This is your top priority every single day.

Forget about everything else: the logo, the website, the name; your most important job when starting out is creating & publishing content.

It's also the hardest of the three, so most people avoid it at all costs.

But...

The only way to build an audience online is by regularly publishing valuable content.

Creating every day allows you to:

1. Figure out what you enjoy creating
2. Learn what resonates with your audience
3. Get better at your craft
4. Give people a reason to follow you

2. Engage

When you start out creating online, it can feel like you're publishing into the void:

0 likes, 0 comments, 0 shares.

The algorithm first tests your content on your followers before recommending it to others.

That's why you must gather your first followers manually:

The most important thing you can do at the start is to connect with people who share your interests.

It's a slow, manual process, but it's the best way to build your initial following.

From there, you'll have enough people to give your posts a natural boost in the algorithm.

3. Consume

The key to never running out of ideas is to stay curious and always be learning.

You must constantly fill up your tank by consuming content around your topic.

Not only will this keep you inspired, but it will also help you become a true expert in your chosen field.

If you're a beginner creator, here are the 3 things you must do every day to grow your audience:

1.  Create
2.  Engage
3.  Consume

The best way to build an audience is to focus on serving and helping others.

Did I miss anything?

How to Grow Your Audience From Scratch (3 things new creators must do every day)


Fellow Creators!

Are You STILL Struggling to Find Your Niche?

If you've struggled to find your niche for longer than a year, you're likely missing a critical step in the process.

Let's talk about it 👇

Most people, myself included, make the mistake of trying to find their niche by thinking about it.

They try to nail down the perfect niche before ever creating a single piece of content.

This is the wrong way to go about it, and it will keep you stuck in analysis paralysis.

Trying to think your way into the perfect niche can also be a form of procrastination:

It saves you from having to do the hard work of creating.

It protects you from the failure and rejection you might experience when you put something out into the world and it flops.

The way to find your niche is through experimentation:

Allow yourself complete freedom to explore any and all niches you find even slightly interesting, and pay attention to which ones you enjoy.

There's no way to know which you'll enjoy until you actually try them.

Experiment broadly and see what resonates:

You'll naturally find yourself drawn to certain topics over others.

Before you know it, you'll FIND yourself in a niche without ever having to DECIDE on one.

Remember:

Finding a niche is a process of discovery, not design.

How To FINALLY Find Your Niche

10 Questions To Help Decide What To Do With Your Life

We live in a time when we have more opportunities available to us than ever before.

But, while this might seem like a good thing, it's created a new problem past generations didn't have to deal with:

When you have unlimited options, how do you choose which ones to pursue?

Here are 10 questions to help decide which opportunities you should pursue:

1.  Is this intrinsically meaningful to me?

2.  Is this aligned with my values?

3.  Is this aligned with my long-term goals?

4.  Do I enjoy the process? Does it put me in a state of flow?

5.  Am I good at this? Is this something I'm willing to spend time improving?

6.  Is this helping me grow in the direction I want?

7.  Who will I become if I keep doing this? Is that desirable, or acceptable, for me?

8.  What's the opportunity cost? What will I need to give up to do this? Is it worth it?

9.  How much time will this take? Am I able and willing to commit that time?

10.  Does it have the potential to earn enough money to reach my financial goals? (If it's something you're doing for financial reasons.)

It's easy to find an opportunity that can satisfy a couple of these criteria, but for something to be truly fulfilling in the long run, it should satisfy all of them.

Hard work, commitment, consistency, and self-discipline are powerful tools that can help you succeed in whatever opportunity you pursue.

That's why it's so critical to take the time to choose the right opportunity to apply them.

The biggest failure in life is to spend all of your time working hard, and finally succeed, at something you should not have been doing in the first place.

10 Questions To Help Decide What You Should Do In Life

Over the past year, I grew an audience of 40k followers in the fashion niche on Instagram, and I was absolutely miserable.

Now, I'm starting over from scratch on Twitter and Linked In, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.

Here's are 3 things that changed:

1.  I only allow myself to talk about topics I'm genuinely interested in.

2.  I meet amazing people who share similar values and interests.

3.  I stopped worrying about "The Algorithm." Instead, my only focus is to make friends and share valuable content I enjoy writing about.

The biggest mindset shift for me came from a @colinandsamir podcast:

The only way to win in the content game long-term is to make it sustainable and enjoyable.

Otherwise, your success will only ensure you have to do more of what you don't like.

Just because success comes easily to you at something, doesn't mean that you should pursue it.

I've realized that the most important metric to optimize for is how much you enjoy the process.

Why I Abandoned 40K Instagram Followers to Start From Scratch

How to grow an online audience from SCRATCH in any niche:

The key to social media success is increased distribution.

Here's how to achieve it if you're truly starting from zero followers:

/Thread 👇/

The power of social media is it can expose your content to new audiences.

But, for your content to be recommended to people who aren't following you, it must first be tested on your existing followers. 

Only if they like and share it, will it get pushed to a broader audience.

The problem when you're starting from scratch is that you might not have any initial followers the algorithm can use to validate your content.

So, your most important priority is to build a small tribe of followers who enjoy, engage with, and share your content.

Here's how:

1. Figure out what kind of people you'd like as your followers.

2. Find out where they hang out online. (Who do they follow? What forums do they participate in?)

3. Build a relationship with them by authentically engaging with them in their posts, comments, and DMs.

The real secret to building your Social Media from scratch is simple:

Forget about the algorithms, and focus your efforts on building genuine relationships with people who share your interests.

Not only is it effective, but it's a much more enjoyable way to grow!

How to Grow An Online Audience From Scratch In ANY Niche

Struggling to come up with writing ideas? Don't know what to write about?

@dickiebush writes A LOT.

Dickie shared how he created a Content Idea Generator so he'd never run out of topic ideas in an interview with @jayclouse on the Creative Elements Podcast.

Here it is:
🧵👇

Here's how you can create your own personal Content Idea Generator Matrix:

Start by making two lists:
First, a list of topics you're interested in. (Eg. Content Creation, Health, Finance, Etc.)
Next, a list of Principles you value. (Eg. Consistency, Mindset, Practice, Etc.)

Congrats! 
You now have your own Content Idea Generator.

Here's how to use it: 
Whenever you need a topic, mix and match items from these two lists to come up with your topic idea.

For example:

Content creation & Consistency
Health & Mindset 
Finance & Repetition

I bet you already had some ideas of what you could write about some of these.

The premise behind this is that constraints actually improve our creativity.

@dickiebush & @Nicolascole77 call this the "knock-knock principle" in their @ship30for30 program.

Here's how it works:

If I told you to write about anything, you'll likely be overwhelmed by too many choices and have a hard time getting started. 

But, if I told you to write about Finance & Mindset, it narrows your options and gives your brain a jumping-off point so it can start to generate ideas.

This is similar to the Table Topics exercise in @Toastmasters, where you are given a random topic and you have to improvise a 5-minute talk about it on the spot.

This trains you to come up with ideas faster, get into a flow state, and stop overthinking.

So, the next time you're struggling to come up with what to write about, try the Constrained Creativity method:

Take two unique topics, mix them together, and use that as a prompt to jump-start your creative flow.