Making yourself newsworthy

Instead of the normal lateral puzzle, we’re gonna shake things up today. Because hey, that’s part of lateral thinking, isn’t it?

Imagine you’re the main story of a major news outlet. What would they say about you? What extraordinary angle could they play?

Would it be your business? A weird/amazing skill you have? Something you did? Your life story?

This time, no answer at the end (but a few examples further down), as this one depends entirely on each and every one of you.

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Write drunk, edit sober

But most importantly, write about yourself (or a part of yourself).

If you want one of the most difficult exercises ever, try writing news headlines and articles about yourself.

Some can be aspirational:

“Lateral thinking newsletter started from scratch reaches 100k subscribers in 6 months”

Some can be negative:

“Extremist views presented as alternative thinking exercises used as propaganda”

Some should be totally made up:

“This country changed its educational curriculum after subscribing to a lateral thinking newsletter”

And some should be inspired from the truth:

“A newsletter started from scratch gained almost 1500 subscribers in less than 2 months”

You should then save these and start over. Keep doing this until you’re totally out of ideas. Look at all the headlines.

This will help you figure out your strong and weak points in a more narrative way.

You might figure out you need to do more.

Or that what you’re doing is slightly scandalous.

Either way, it’s an exciting way to laterally view yourself or your projects.

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What did you think about today’s different approach? Let me know with a like if you liked it or a reply saying “tomatoes” (I hate tomatoes) if you didn’t.

Bit of a not-so-humble brag: when you don’t have a powerful enough headline, you make one. Here’s what we did to end up in Reuters and Business Insider.