17 lessons learned in 2017

Between strategy projects at comOn, a 3-week trip to the US and launching a newsletter called MADvice, I tried to spend a little more time reading, listening and thinking.

This is a list of the 17 most surprising things I learned last year, in chronological order. If you’re curious, click here to see all the 173 random learnings and thoughts I wrote down during the year.

1. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply. [Stephen R. Covey]
2. If you refrained from eating meat just one day per week, you’d do more good than by growing your veggies in a home garden. And if you walk 1.5 miles and then have just one glass of milk to replenish your energy, you’d have had more impact on the environment if you’d just taken the car, but skipped the milk. [Freakonomics]
3. Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations. [George Orwell]
4. Most people measure productivity by the time spent working, but doing something unimportant well does not make it important. So instead of focusing on doing as much as you can as best as you can, just focus on doing the few things that will lead to the biggest progress. Be effective, not efficient. [Tim Ferriss]
5. Those that want to stay relevant in their professions will need to focus on skills and capabilities that artificial intelligence has trouble replicating — understanding, motivating, and interacting with human beings. [Megan Beck and Barry Libert]
6. We’re moving from an era of finding customers for our products to an era of finding products for our customers. [Seth Godin]
7. The illiterate of the future are not those who cannot read or write, but they are those who cannot learn, un-learn and re-learn. [Alvin Toffler]
8. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. [Bill Gates]
9. Bill Walsh, the American football coach, said once that “Winners act like winners before they become winners. That’s how they become winners.” An idea shared by the Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton: “I was a NFL quarterback and a millionaire even before I was a NFL quarterback and a millionaire.”
10. The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex. [Yvon Chouinard]
11. To sell something surprising make it familiar. To sell something familiar make it surprising. [Derek Thompson] Exposure leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to sub-conscious preference. But too much familiarity has the opposite effect. The power of familiarity is strongest when people are least expecting it.
12. Democratized distribution has created a proliferation of choices. Increased choice is great, but it also makes decisions much more difficult and time-consuming. We, as consumers, want the perception of choice but not the action of choice. We want to buy the best thing for us, at the best possible price, with the least possible mental effort. [Filipe Macedo]
13. “Everything before the word ‘but’ is horse shit.” [Jon Snow] “My brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word ‘but’ really counts.” [Benjen Stark]
14. Exercising gives you more energy. So when you feel tired, exercise. When you feel down, exercise. And when you don’t feel like exercising, exercise. Exercise everyday. [Filipe Macedo]
15. “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” General George Patton said that. The key takeaway: WHEN a decision is made is much more important than WHAT decision is made. Fast decisions, unless they’re fatal, are always better. [Dave Girouard]
16. When you sleep, you integrate the information you collected during the day and, believe it or not, you problem-solve. In one study, researchers found that students were better able to solve a problem following a good night’s sleep than by working on it through the night. In fact, you’re twice as likely to solve a problem after sleeping. [Filipe Macedo]
17. Our most productive day time of day is 11 AM when we complete the most tasks (9.7% of all tasks). After lunchtime, our productivity drops — and it completely plummets after 4PM. Or most productive day of the week is Monday (20.4% of tasks). We’re least productive at the end of the week (Friday, 16.7%), and unsurprisingly, get virtually nothing done on the weekends (Saturday + Sunday, 4.7%). [Priceonomics]

If you’re curious about other things I learned, check the 9 things I learned after 30 MAD weeks celebrating my 30th birthday last year, or 13 things I learned from a survey I did to friends, family and coworkers.

Why I Celebrated My Birthday 30 Times (And Why You Should Too)

13 things I learned from my friends

Thank you for reading!

I’m Filipe Macedo, Strategist and Chief Marketing Officer at comOn, an independent full service marketing agency from Lisbon. If you found this article helpful in any way, please take a moment to recommend it below.

I’m available for speaking — see here the topics I usually address.