#019 - Alina Sere (@alina_thinks) - Helping others build creative habits

Today's Maker: Alina Sere (@alina_thinks) - Helping others build creative habits

WHY SHE'S FEATURED:

• She has a portfolio of beautifully designed tools to help creators, including Finn, an SMS coach that helps you write your newsletter and the Podcasting Playbook, a dashboard for organizing your podcast workflow

• Started the amazing Creator Habits podcast and newsletter, a community about growing your audience one idea, one follower, one habit at a time

• She's featured really amazing & interesting people like @EspreeDevora, @StockJabber and @AprilynneA

• I'm obsessed with her design skills, I mean, just look at how beautiful these podcast previews are 😍

Alina was on my radar for a while based on the similarities between our products. A newsletter about habits, an old man texting you to help you build habits, and building an audience on Twitter. All I need is a podcast and we basically have the same portfolio of work 😂 So it was only right that I asked her to be our maker of habit this week.

Like me, Alina understands the power of creative habits and she's on a mission to help others build them. Creative habits can be hard because nothing really happens if we DON'T do them. But when we do--when we show up to write, or iterate on our product, or record a video--there's so much magic that can happen. You can get a new subscriber, user, or follower. You can inspire someone or teach them something. You can connect with others with similar interests. You could land a new job. Anything, really.

I'm obviously aligned with Alina's mission, but I what I really love is her audience-first approach. Rather than going straight into building a SaaS product, Alina is spending her time making a very high quality podcast with well-renowned guests and amazing graphics(seriously, I'm obsessed).

So, what habits did this creative habit expert build to create such a high-quality podcast and land such awesome guests?👇

3 Habits that changed Alina's trajectory:

• 🌙 Making time for learning & reflections every evening - Every evening, I spend 5-10 minutes going through a standard set of 5 questions that help me evaluate not only how effective I was at completing what I set out to do, but more importantly, what I've learned, what brought me energy, how I can improve. On Sundays I try to review my answers for a quick pulse check, it’s the one practice that has given me more insight into what I actually enjoy and what brings me energy versus what I tell myself I enjoy because it makes sense externally. 

• 🥅 Setting & Celebrating Focus Goals - For many years, I had an endless to-do list and a feeling like what I was doing was never enough. Now, every evening when I write out my agenda for the next day, I add the 1 (and sometimes 2) things that actually need to get done. Often these are important from a long-term goals perspective, though sometimes these are simply urgent and important tasks. After I list the myriad other tasks that are also on my to-do list. At the end of the day, I only pay attention to whether I accomplished the 1-2 focus items and if I did, I make sure to have a mini-celebration. That’s what helps reinforce positive associations around completing hard tasks.

• 📵 Leaving my phone outside of my bedroom - I never realized how much time I spent in the mornings scrolling through my phone until I decided to experiment with leaving it outside of my bedroom. That was a year ago. What I found was an extra 3 hours of morning time (and I'm not exaggerating). Instead of using this extra time for work, I've primarily focused on meditating, running, and journaling every morning. Sometimes I’ve fallen off some of these (for example, I took a long stretch where I stopped meditating), but having at least one of these in my mornings helps tremendously with my mental health. 

Wow I might have to try some of these! Mini-celebrations sound fun.

Thanks for sharing with us, Alina!

Follow Alina on Twitter here 👉 @alina_thinks and definitely give her podcast a listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts

Build new habits + stick with them

Looking to build some new habits? Harold is a quirky text-messaging bot that helps you build new habits with one text message a day. 

You can use Harold to build habits like Alina, for example:

• Reflecting for 5 minutes at the end of your day

• Leaving your phone outside of your room

You'll be surprised what can happen with just 1 text message each day.

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