One day not so long ago, I was taking a short six-hour break to poke around the Internet, when I saw a trending article that made me chuckle. The title read:
“25 Anti-Mimetic Tactics for Living a Counter-Cultural Life”
I chuckled because the term mimetic — how humans imitate each other — exploded in popularity in the second half of last year. The source of the explosion was the book Wanting, which was published last June and soon after became a bestseller. Suddenly, mimetic was everywhere.
And that to me was the funny bit.
Mimetic the term is itself mimetic. And so that article about anti-mimetic strategies is a little like writing,
“An Independent Thinker’s Guide to Independent Thinking for Other Independent Thinkers”
I bring this up because of a fundamental belief I have, which I want to share with you. Maybe it will resonate with you, and maybe it will even be valuable to you in some way. My belief is this:
If an idea is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now.
On the other hand, if an idea seems worthwhile today, there’s a good chance it won’t seem so in a year.
This leads to a simple rule:
Only give your attention to the many ideas that have survived for at least a year. Articles, books, scientific theories, comic strips, cocktail recipes, Saturday Night Live skits, terms and phrases.
And yes. I understand the contradictory nature of sharing this idea with you in a disposable daily email. The only thing I can say is that I’ve never shied away from contradicting myself.
Anyways, Wanting, the book, was published on June 1, 2021. I still haven’t read it — and I won’t, at least until its one-year anniversary. That’s what I recommend to you as well.
But maybe you’re looking for something to read.
Maybe even something that’s been around for more than a year.
In that case, I can further recommend a little book I wrote and published some 18 months ago.
It collects 10 ideas — some of them a few years old, some a few decades, one almost a century — from 10 of history’s most successful and most influential direct marketers and copywriters.
To find out more or to grab a copy: