For the past year and a half, I put in place a self-imposed content diet.

I restricted my intake of non-fiction, business-related content in an attempt to slow down my exponentially growing to-do do list and shut down the comparison syndrome I was experiencing. I wanted to make time and space to simply get down to work on the things I knew were important at the time for the continued growth of my business.

Over the past few months, I’ve loosened my diet and started consuming more podcasts, blogs, and newsletters on a regular basis. Maybe it’s in relation to the lack of content I had been consuming, or maybe it’s just the creators I’ve gravitated to recently, but I’ve noticed that a lot of what I’ve been consuming lately is split into two distinct camps.

On the one side, there’s the standard marketing content from countless creators. The email newsletters, in particular, follow a rigidly defined and homogenous framework, that does a little educating, provides a bit of personality and probably works pretty well gets people to sign up for their products and services.

On the other side is a class of content that certainly educates, but more than anything it makes you think.

Some of the creators whose work has fallen into this category for me recently are Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Claus, and Austin Kleon.

I find that every time I engage with their work, while I may have learned something immediately actionable, I’m always left with something that needs to be thought about, pored over, and meditated on. There is work to be done on my part in order to unlock the real lesson behind the content.

These creators have developed the rare but essential skill of connecting unlikely dots, drawing parallels and relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas, topics, and subjects.

They have perspective.

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that none of us will create our best work without first doing the work of developing our own unique perspective, and then sharing it.

Developing a unique perspective takes time, it also takes experiencing life and consuming a wide range of information. But on top of all that it takes thought, space and quiet to process that experience and that information and connect the dots where none existed before.

Unique perspectives have the power to create a monopoly for us in our space. There is no other Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Klaus or Austin Kleon.

Each of them has a take on their overall subject matter that is entirely unique.

So along with developing your craft, creating more and better work, and building an audience around it, start intentionally developing your perspective. My guess is the rest of your work is going to benefit if you do.

---