✪ Personal Perspective - #44
Sharing your point of view is what gives value to who you are.
Thoughts and ideas on how to build trust through value creation, distilling, taste-making, sense-making, interpreting, re-framing.
Perspective has two definitions.
Context: a sense of the larger picture of the world, not just what is immediately in front of us.
Framing: an individual’s unique way of looking at the world, a way that interprets its events
Ryan Holiday • The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Personal Perspective
What gets appreciated, read and trusted online is rapidly changing.
To get any of those, there must be some “you” in what you write, share, or create.
If until last year writing informative “how-to” content and guides had multiple good reasons for being pursued, this is no longer the case. Now AI can produce most of that content, better, with more references and with all of the nuances and specifics my audience may need.
We can compete with AI, but only if we become active actors in what we explain, by sharing personal experiences, learning, discoveries, feelings, and desires from our own very personal, unique viewpoint.
Because again, if there is no personal story and no unique perspective, nothing can match AI’s evolving ability to gather, collect and organize relevant information on any topic.
What is unmatchable by AI it’s your unique viewpoint.
This is what now has increasing value.
You, your personal story, your perspective, your feelings, your preferences (and the reasons behind them) and your ability to frame through them the ideas, tools, concepts you explore and share with others online.
It’s through this unique perspective that you can create value today.
The priority is not anymore to know everything about x.
The priority is to be able to interpret, evaluate and assess the value of x for those who want to understand more of it through you.
In simpler words:
The type of human-generated online content considered of value is rapidly evolving.
AI continues to improve at producing high-quality informational and "how-to" content in a way that we humans can’t match.
Value in human-created content is increasingly built around the ability to “frame” some part of reality in a very personal way.
It can take place through the sharing of personal stories, of unique perspectives, and of original insights.
By framing what I want to focus on through the lens of my own experiences and perspective, I can create content that contributes to better understanding, because I am not anymore a relay point, an echo, a parrot repeating what others have already said: I have become an original viewpoint.
Having an original viewpoint in any field, is the way to stand out, build trust, and provide real value and insights that AI cannot replicate.
“Just to be clear, your point of view is the truth you overlay onto your niche or industry-specific expertise. It’s an insight that influences the work you do.”
Drew McLellan • Sell with Authority
Pointers
Examples of a few writers I follow, who include their personal perspective in what they share, review, analyze:
- , for Recomendo
but there are many more. (Share who your favourites are.)
Yours or Someone Else?
Very few people really have their own opinion. Very often, their opinion is just the opinion of someone else. Perfectly prepared, warmed up and served medium well.
I'm not above this, and I'd argue not many people are. All our opinions are shaped by other peoples' opinion. It's how this all works. The question is just, how many opinions do I require to shape mine?
Did I just take a ready-made opinion based on zero insight or experience? Or did I come up with my own unique point of view made of dozens, of not hundred of references combined with my own experience and lens on life? That's a question I ask myself. I want to be confident to have my own opinion.
It doesn't need to be the popular opinion, it doesn't need to be the trendy one either... but I want it to be mine in a way in which I can articulate the WHY — Especially to myself.
Tobias van Schneider - My Anti-New Year’s Resolutions
It’s OK To Disagree
It took me a long time to start finding my voice—my ideas, my lens, my belief system. It’s not that it wasn’t there; it’s that I buried it under the weight of other people’s voices, voices I’d deemed more worthy than my own.
And it wasn’t until I started to speak up and out that the floodgates opened, and self-knowledge, belief, and confidence came pouring out of me.
Of course, I met resistance from others, and I still do. But I’ve learned that it’s okay to disagree, to be unliked, to hear ‘I don’t get it.’ Because finding your voice is more important than being part of the chorus that drowns you out. Your voice is your power, your truth, your unique contribution to the world. Don’t trade it for the comfort of blending in.
The world doesn’t need another echo. It needs your voice—strong, clear, and unapologetically yours.
• Forty Years, Forty Lessons
Your Personal Story Has Value
Your personal experience is unique.
No one has lived your exact life or seen the world through your precise lens, which makes your perspective valuable and irreplaceable.
Scott Scheper - via Sublime - Ian Grindey
People Buy Your Perspective
Because people will only buy your service if they’re bought into the philosophy that informs it.
Your perspective is your product.
Alex Owens James • Death of the Copywriter
Follow a path with a heart.
From Koh Samui (TH)
Robin Good
