Most countries have a central bank that manages the money supply. It is independent of the government to prevent political interference. The government can implement different types of economic policy, like decreasing taxes, but can't increase the money supply.

The government can't just increase the money supply

The central bank determines how much money is in circulation at a time. They can authorise the printing of unlimited money to help an economy in crisis, but that's a short-term solution. It doesn't necessarily help with economic growth in the long term and can actually hurt the economy.

The central bank 

When there is more money in circulation, the manufacturers of goods like food, clothing, and cars could respond to demand simply by raising prices. This means you could no longer buy as much with the same amount of money. It is known as inflation. Inflation of about 2% a year is considered a sign of economic health, but more can quickly damage the economy.

Inflation

In recent decades, central banks have tried quantitative easing to infuse the economy with cash while maintaining a low risk of severe inflation. The quantitative easing approach is where a central bank increases cash flow by purchasing another entity's bonds. Anyone can buy bonds from corporations or governments. When you buy a bond, you're really loaning money to the company or government, who will pay it back later with interest.<ul><li>When a person buys a bond, they're using money already in circulation.</li><li>When a central bank buys a bond, it creates cash.</li></ul>

Quantitative easing

During the 2008/9 financial crisis and 2020, the United States' central bank bought unlimited bonds from the U.S. government called treasury bonds, loaning the U.S. government money. The government used the money to fund relief efforts. This isn't the same as printing money. Because of the way bonds are priced, the Federal Reserve effectively lowered the return on them. This incentivises other investors to lend to riskier entities, which should help companies to borrow money to use in projects, growing the economy over time.

Buying bonds from the government

When the Federal Reserve pledged to buy unlimited government debt, this means the government could just issue more bonds which the central bank would buy. The government could then use the money from the new bonds to pay off the old bonds, meaning the government never pays back its debt. Some economists say that when a central bank buys government debt, it's a subversion of a system designed to protect the economy. Others insist that these measures help stabilise economies.

Concerns over central banks buying government debt

Explore the economic strategy of quantitative easing, where a central bank purchases bonds in order to boost the economy. -- In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked economies worldwide. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many businesses struggled to survive or shut down. Governments responded with some of the largest economic relief packages in history— the US alone spent $2.2 trillion on a first round of relief. So where did all this money come from? Jonathan Smith explores the strategy of quantitative easing. Lesson by Jonathan Smith, directed by Serin İnan, Kozmonot Animation Studio. Support Our Non-Profit Mission ---------------------------------------------- Support us on Patreon: http://bit.ly/TEDEdPatreon Check out our merch: http://bit.ly/TEDEDShop ---------------------------------------------- Connect With Us ---------------------------------------------- Sign up for our newsletter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdNewsletter Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/TEDEdFacebook Find us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdTwitter Peep us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/TEDEdInstagram ---------------------------------------------- Keep Learning ---------------------------------------------- View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-governments-create-money-out-of-thin-air-jonathan-smith Dig deeper with additional resources: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-governments-create-money-out-of-thin-air-jonathan-smith#digdeeper Animator's website: https://www.kozmonot.tv ---------------------------------------------- Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Nathan Giusti, Helen Lee, Anthony Benedict, Karthik Balsubramanian, John Hong, Annastasshia Ames, Amy Lopez, Vinh-Thuy Nguyen, Liz Candee, Kathryn Vacha, Ugur Doga Sezgin, Anthony Arcis, Chung Wah Gnapp, Karmi Nguyen, Yelena Baykova, Harshita Jagdish Sahijwani, Nick Johnson, Carlos H. Costa, Roberto Patrick, Les Howard, Jennifer Kurkoski, Ryan B Harvey, Abhishek Bansal, Akinola Emmanuel, Jose Arcadio Valdes Franco, Karl Laius, JY Kang, Heidi Stolt, Alexis Hevia, Christina Salvatore, Karlee Finch, Michael Goldberg, Denise A Pitts, Doug Henry, Kristiyan Bonev, Keven Webb, Mihai Sandu, Deepak Iyer, Javid Gozalov, Kyanta Yap, Rebecca Reineke, William Biersdorf, Patricia Alves Panagides, Valeria Sloan Vasquez, Yvette Mocete, Cyrus Garay, Samuel Barbas, Brighteagle, LadyGeek and Curtis Light.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Money & Investments

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Explore the economic strategy of quantitative easing, where a central bank purchases bonds in order to boost the economy.

--

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked economies worldwide. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many businesses struggled to survive or shut down. Governments responded with some of the largest economic relief packages in history— the US alone spent $2.2 trillion on a first round of relief. So where did all this money come from? Jonathan Smith explores the strategy of quantitative easing.

Lesson by Jonathan Smith, directed by Serin İnan, Kozmonot Animation Studio.

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Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Nathan Giusti, Helen Lee, Anthony Benedict, Karthik Balsubramanian, John Hong, Annastasshia Ames, Amy Lopez, Vinh-Thuy Nguyen, Liz Candee, Kathryn Vacha, Ugur Doga Sezgin, Anthony Arcis, Chung Wah Gnapp, Karmi Nguyen, Yelena Baykova, Harshita Jagdish Sahijwani, Nick Johnson, Carlos H. Costa, Roberto Patrick, Les Howard, Jennifer Kurkoski, Ryan B Harvey, Abhishek Bansal, Akinola Emmanuel, Jose Arcadio Valdes Franco, Karl Laius, JY Kang, Heidi Stolt, Alexis Hevia, Christina Salvatore, Karlee Finch, Michael Goldberg, Denise A Pitts, Doug Henry, Kristiyan Bonev, Keven Webb, Mihai Sandu, Deepak Iyer, Javid Gozalov, Kyanta Yap, Rebecca Reineke, William Biersdorf, Patricia Alves Panagides, Valeria Sloan Vasquez, Yvette Mocete, Cyrus Garay, Samuel Barbas, Brighteagle, LadyGeek and Curtis Light.

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TED-Ed

Why can’t governments print an unlimited amount of money? - Jonathan Smith

Whether you’re flying through the sky, falling from a twelve-story building or having a romantic relationship with your neighbour, dreams are a window into a world without constraints. The barriers in our everyday life don’t exist. Some parts of our dream world appear realistic, but others are tokens of our imagination. And this begs to question: Do our dreams have meaning? For researchers, this has long been a point of contention.

The Meaning Of Our Dreams

Dreaming also prepares us for social interactions. Positive and neutral dreams may help hone our social cognition and perception. We are very rarely alone in our dream world, so these dreams help us to rehearse social interaction.It wouldn’t make sense for dreams not to have meaning because they’ve stayed throughout our evolutionary history.Animals also dream and it’s unlikely that it’s for no reason. Other experts contend that the breadth of dreaming is so wide that defining its purpose and meaning is like defining the purpose of waking thought.

The Purpose of Dreaming

Dreaming is just thinking but in a different brain state. Defining its purpose depends on what you’re dreaming about.We agonize about many of the same things when we’re sleeping as when we’re awake, like relationships, work issues, hopes and fears, she says. Dreams are different, but the content is often the same.Visual areas of the brain are much more active during dream states as are emotional centres. While linear logic and language areas are damped down.

A Different State Of The Mind

Dreams give us a different idea of how to do things because they help us to think outside of the box and they can solve problems that involve going against conventional wisdom.But dreams help us to think differently because the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with habits and learned behaviours, is less active when we’re dreaming.

Removal Of Barriers

You may find dreams automatically concerning when they’re terrifying. Things like post-traumatic nightmares — more intense nightmares that may replay actual traumatic events and are particularly violent — should concern you. But in most cases, they already do because we wake up petrified.Dreams are casting a pretty loose net of associations to things that may be metaphorically a part of ourselves, but aren’t closely tied into any actions that we may take in real life.

Our Dreams And How We Should Act

People tend to get more concerned with their dreams than necessary. It’s relatively normal to have some sexual dreams about someone other than your monogamous partner. People may also have dreams where they’ve murdered someone, but that doesn’t mean they’re violent people in real life.Dreams can give us a different perspective on threats and problems that we encounter in our everyday life. What we dream at night can allow us to think in a more “flexible” way and find new solutions to the issues that pervade our days.

We process real-life situations in our dreams, but that doesn’t mean we should always pay attention to them. 

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Health

Do All Dreams Have Meaning?

As babies, we could get people to do things for us without needing to say anything.  Adults would correctly surmise that we crave some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, or that we're ready for a snooze.  While this is highly gratifying and important in infancy, it can be dangerous if we keep these expectations for the rest of our lives. It can breed the idea that anyone who claims to know us should be able to determine our deepest aspirations and wishes without us needing to say much.

Assuming others know what we mean or want

We may assume that others must know what we want without telling them. We presume our lover must understand what we're upset about, that our colleagues must intuitively know what we want to be done.   Then we assume that if they don't, it must be a sign that they deliberately refuse or that they're wicked. So we justify our sulk, where we punish people for having committed offences while refusing to reveal the offences to them.

Destructive thoughts

Teaching is a skill we should put into practice daily. The subject we must patiently become experts and give lessons in is called "ourselves": what we like, what we fear, what we're hopeful about, what we want from the world. It is understandable when we should fail in our teaching duties because we never had to bother with all that in the early years.

The fundamental importance of teaching

There is a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them clearly. We assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being wicked or deliberately obtuse. The truth is we have forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching. Sign up to our new newsletter and get 10% off your first online order of a book, product or class: https://bit.ly/3HpVdSa For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://bit.ly/3xWeb0F Our website has classes, articles and products to help you lead a more fulfilled life: https://bit.ly/37S5QAm Join this channel to get access to exclusive members perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog/join FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://bit.ly/3ETcJO1 “One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining what we intend — and, typically, they’ll get it right. They’ll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Deanca Rensyta Mihardja https://www.deancarensyta.com/about Title animation produced in collaboration with Vale Productions https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/

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There is a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them clearly.  We assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being wicked or deliberately obtuse.  The truth is we have forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching.
Sign up to our new newsletter and get 10% off your first online order of a book, product or class: https://bit.ly/3HpVdSa
For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://bit.ly/3xWeb0F
Our website has therapy, articles and products to help you lead a more fulfilled life: https://bit.ly/37S5QAm

FURTHER READING

You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: 
https://bit.ly/3ETcJO1

“One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining what we intend — and, typically, they’ll get it right. They’ll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again…”

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Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: 
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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

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Title animation produced in collaboration with

Vale Productions
https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/

We're interested in self-understanding, calm and emotional maturity.

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Why You Should Explain What You Need

Averages, relationships, trends and graphs are not what they seem. Statistics can make an important fact look as if it is nothing noteworthy and a trivial fact like there may be more in it. Writers need statistical methods and statistical terms when reporting data of social and economic trends, but they need to use the words honestly, and readers need an understanding of what they mean. Otherwise, it may result in semantic absurdity.

The abused statistic

“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.”

For any statistic to be worth it, it should come from a representative sample of the group it is describing. But a representative sample is near impossible because of lack of time, resources, and other practical reasons. As a result, you are more likely to see a subset based on biases from the method of sampling rather than the representative group itself. When you see the statistic that, for example, represent the entire nation, ask yourself, “Which part of the nation?”

The representative sample

There are three common kinds of average: 
<ol>
<li>Mean. Add up all the values and divide by the quantity of the values.</li>
<li>Median. The value in the middle of the sample.</li>
<li>Mode. The most common value. </li>
</ol>
When a statistic cites the “average”, it could be the mean, median or mode, which can be drastically different. The unspecified “average” is used to prove a point while leaving out any numbers that might question their predetermined point.

The kind of average

If you want to use a test to measure something or somebody, it is equally important to know the limitations of the test. What can it not measure?  For example, an intelligence test does not measure leadership, creative imagination, diligence, and emotional balance. The test may still be useful for admission to a university or a job, but you should also understand its limitations.

Consider what it really measures

“As long as the errors remain one-sided, it is not easy to attribute them to bungling or accident.” Statistics are often used to support a cause or agenda a person believes in, rather than to disprove them. When people err in their use of statistics, it is always in the direction of their beliefs or agenda. So, instead of getting an unbiased view of the world, we get a biased view that other people want us to see.

Statistics are always biased

“‘Does it make sense?’ will often cut a statistic down to size when the whole rigmarole is based on an unproved assumption.” Consider what they are saying and why they are saying it. If a statistic doesn’t seem right, or someone arrives at a conclusion that seems questionable, ask “Does it make sense”.

The common-sense test

It describes using one thing as a way to claim proof of something else, even if there exists no correlation between the two.Meaningless statements:<ul><li>“32% of doctors think Mercedes vehicles are safe."</li><li>“27 % of a large sample of eminent physicians smoke Throaties— more than any other brand.”</li></ul>Expressing the data to suit your view. For instance, express exactly the same fact by calling it a one % return on sales, a fifteen % return on investment, a ten-million-dollar profit, or a decrease of sixty % from last year.

The semidetached figure

If B follows A, then A has caused B.For example:<ul><li>Assuming that since smoking and low grades go together, smoking causes low grades.</li><li>If you attend college, you will earn more money than if you decide to use the next four years in another way. The unwarranted assumption is that since college-trained people make more money, they make it because they went to college. However, we don’t know if these people would have made more money had they not gone to college.</li></ul>

Correlation vs. Causation

<ol><li>Who says so? What is the agenda? Who will benefit from presenting the data that way? Does it tell the whole story or only the good or bad part? Does it misuse average? Does any bias come into play?</li><li>How do they know? Where did the data come from? Is it representative? Can it be biased? Is the sample big enough?</li><li>What’s missing? </li><li>Did someone change the subject between the raw data and the conclusion? Is it a real statistic, or what someone reported?</li><li>Does it make sense? Pay attention if it fails the common sense test. Is something complex reduced to a single number?</li></ol>

How to avoid blind belief in statistics

This book lays the groundwork for the many ways statistics are used to mislead people. Honest people must learn the tricks of statistics so that they can interpret data intelligently.

Over Half a Million Copies Sold--an Honest-to-Goodness Bestseller Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to full rather than to inform.

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Problem Solving

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Books

If you want to outsmart a crook, learn his tricks—Darrell Huff explains exactly how in the classic How to Lie with Statistics. From distorted graphs and biased samples to misleading averages, there are countless statistical dodges that lend cover to anyone with an ax to grind or a product to sell. With abundant examples and illustrations, Darrell Huff’s lively and engaging primer clarifies the basic principles of statistics and explains how they’re used to present information in honest and not-so-honest ways. Now even more indispensable in our data-driven world than it was when first published, How to Lie with Statistics is the book that generations of readers have relied on to keep from being fooled.

Darrell Huff

How to Lie with Statistics

Companies and teams that use rituals can significantly increase collaboration and productivity.
<ul>
<li>Rituals give a sense of psychological safety and belonging.</li>
<li>Rituals provide an opportunity to connect to purpose and values.</li>
<li>Psychological safety and purpose together boost performance.</li>
</ul>
Studies found that collaboration went up by 47% and productivity by 50% when people felt a sense of psychological safety.

Rituals in the workplace

<ol><li>A ritual is something to which we assign meaning and intention.</li><li>A ritual has a regular cadence, repetition, like every morning or once a week or month.</li><li>A ritual goes beyond its practical purpose.</li></ol> To understand a ritual, ask when employees at your company feel the most like they belong? You would know something is a ritual if it seems weird or crazy if it didn't happen. It would feel like a loss.

Understanding rituals

<ul><li>You can be intentional around your meetings - around beginnings and endings. It's possible to maintain some magic even when people are remote.</li><li>For asynchronous companies, a regular meeting during a suitable time for everyone with your camera on can still be worthwhile.</li><li>Managers need to build time to have one-on-ones and find out how the person is really doing. They don't need to be every week for an hour. They can be bite-sized. But you have to check in.</li></ul>

Rituals for hybrid and asynchronous companies

Workplaces are where people encounter some of the greatest diversity.  When we are left to our own devices, we naturally gravitate toward people that are more like us. Therefore, we have to be intentional about how we connect with other people, whether it's through bringing together multiple employee resource groups (ERGs) or through mentoring and professional development.

Be intentional about how people connect

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Career

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Personal Development

How to use rituals to connect with work and retain colleagues

When writing a review, although everyone likes a good story, it's important to only layout your experience with relevant information that other people might base their opinions upon. Such as the date when you went, when you placed an order, when did it arrive, etcetera.Whether you're writing a complaint or a compliment, readers would like to know the service time, how the staff is towards the customers.

Include relevant details only

One of the largest criticisms of online reviews is that many of them are vindictive and target specific individuals.It doesn't make the review useful when you "blast" a specific person, it only makes it seem pompous and blathering. Keep the review about your experience and omit individual names.

Leave out the proper names

A good review is the type of review that is useful to the people who will come along behind you.It's great to read a review that is intelligently, coherently, and honestly sharing their experience, whether negative or positive.When writing a review, you must organize your thoughts, use complete sentences, and then check your spelling and grammar before posting it.

"Good" is not always positive

This doesn't work for everyone but it can make your review stand out and certain. Leave your contact details on your reviews so that people may be able to contact you to corroborate your story.Sometimes we need the cover of anonymity to be truthful and honest without the fear of reprisal or judgment, but if you're able to stand behind your words, it most certainly helps.

Offer yourself up for commentary

You don't need other people's opinions to bolster your own.Remember that your review is about your own experience.

Your review is your experience

Positive reviews almost never gets challenged, but they're most often ignored by future readers. It's the negative reviews that capture the attention of the crowd.However, negative reviews can be useful if you address why you think your experience unfolded the way it did.We understand that there is no excuse for poor treatment and bad service, but if we show a little understanding, it can validate your review as an honest one.

Address the other side of the story

In the days before the internet, our options for reading reviews of a restaurant, product or business were pretty limited. But now, with a few clicks or taps on our phone, we can know exactly what thousands of people think about that new bagel shop. And as helpful as some reviews can be, they are ultimately a crap…

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Leadership & Management

How to Write Genuinely Useful Reviews Online

This is the behavior that makes it difficult to stay positive around negative people. It's where we tend to overreact negatively to normal situations due to stress, exhaustion, or an emotional disorder.
Just as how we offend other people because we feel offended and both sides of the dynamic think that they're merely reacting to the other. It happens in any relationship, familial or social.

Emotional Reactivity

This is the extreme form of emotional reactivity. What happens is that:
<ul>
<li>We tend to recall past disputes with revised dialogues (when they said this, I should've said that);</li>
<li>We imagine arguments that haven't taken place yet; and</li>
<li>We feel that other people make us angry and are trying to get on our nerves.</li>
</ul>
Emotional reactivity spreads as quickly as lightning due to the salience of negative emotions and their vast contagion.

Reactaholics

Negative emotions like anger and anxiety are processed much quicker than rational judgment. We are filled with confirmation bias that makes us overlook contradicting evidence.
Most of the thought process during this behavior is about justifying what we're feeling rather than testing the reality of its perceptual influence.

Feelings Vs Accurate Perception

Whenever we realize that the conversation is going downhill, it is important to ask ourselves these questions:
<ol>
<li>What is this person reacting to? Are they perceiving me to be disrespectful, biased, or narcissistic?</li>
<li>Am I acting like the kind of person I want to be?</li>
</ol>
We must remember to act according to our deeper values instead of blindly reacting to situations and always ask the other person to do the same.

Breaking The Reactive Dynamic

When dynamic reactivity is high, we become what we despise.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Mental Health

How Emotional Reactivity Causes Conflict

When you speak off-script, you may worry that you will go off on a tangent.
But getting straight to the point and sticking with it comes down to knowing your message. When you are sure of your message, you can change your words without ever losing the thread.

Know your message

<ol>
<li>It's one idea. Focus your idea on the one point you want your audience to buy into. Too many ideas will produce confusion.</li>
<li>You can express it in a single, clear sentence. If your message is more than one sentence or a long sentence, your listeners won't "get it."</li>
<li>It's engaging. Your message should engage the hearts and minds of your listeners. It means you know what your audience wants.</li>
<li>It carries a message you believe in.</li>
<li>It's positive. Your message should move the room in a hopeful direction.</li>
<li>Ensure everyone can identify your message. "My view/point/message is..."</li>
</ol>

Six things every message needs

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Entertainment

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Product & Design

How To Get Straight To The Point No Matter What You’re Trying To Say

All humans partake in gossip in some form. Everyone talks about other people. One study found that male participants spent 55% of conversation time and female participants 67% conversation time on socially relevant topics.
People like to think of gossip as the same as malicious rumours, but researchers define gossip as talking about people who aren't present.

The broader view of gossip

Gossip gives people the ability to spread useful information to large social networks. Without engaging in these discussions, we would be unable to maintain societies.
A 2019 meta-analysis found that of the 52 minutes a day the 467 participants spent gossiping, most of it was neutral. 15% was considered negative gossip, and 9% was positive.

Gossip: The chatter is often harmless

<ul>
<li>It helps us get information about people from others when the network is too big to get it firsthand.</li>
<li>Gossip offers teachable moments and provides examples of what's socially acceptable and what's not.</li>
<li>People want to be seen positively by others and fit in socially. Gossip can help to keep people in check morally. </li>
<li>Gossip can spread the reputation of someone.</li>
<li>Gossip facilitate bonding and closeness. </li>
<li>It can also serve as a form of entertainment.</li>
</ul>

Gossip plays many different roles

Some types of gossip should be avoided, such as harmful gossip that serves no greater purpose.
There's also a physiological distinction between active and passive participation in gossip. A study showed that when subjects heard about another person's anti-social behaviour, their heart rates increased. When they actively gossiped about the person, it helped calm their body.

Active and passive gossip

Why do people gossip? Here's the scientific reason we love chatter, according to psychologists.

The Science Behind Why People Gossip

The hardest part of a writer's job is sitting down to do the work. Writing happens in three phases.
<ol>
<li>Beginning: You have to decide what you're going to write and how you're going to write it.</li>
<li>Staying motivated: You will face self-doubt and overwhelm. Planning ahead will ensure you won't quit when the obstacles come.</li>
<li>Finishing: Nobody cares if you almost wrote a book. They want to read what you actually finished.</li>
</ol>

What it takes to write a book

<ol>
<li>Decide what the book is about. Write the argument of your book in a sentence, then turn that into a paragraph, then into a one-page outline. Then write a table of contents to help guide your writing. Break each chapter into a few sections.</li>
<li>Set a daily word count goal. John Grisham began writing when he was really busy as a lawyer and new dad. He got up an hour or two early and wrote one page a day until he had a novel. A page is about 300 words.</li>
<li>Set a time to work on your book every day. Consistency makes creativity easier.</li>
<li>Write in the same special place every time that is different from where you do other activities.</li>
</ol>

Writing a book: Getting started

<ol>
<li>Set a total word count. 40,000 - 60,000 words = standard nonfiction/novella book. A long nonfiction book/standard-length novel contains 60,000 - 80,000 words, and a very long nonfiction/long novel contains 80,000 - 100,000 words.</li>
<li>Give yourself weekly deadlines. Make it a word count and celebrate the progress you've made.</li>
<li>Get early feedback. Have a few trusted advisers such as friends, editors, or family that will help you discern what's worth writing.</li>
</ol>

Writing a book: Doing the work

<ul>
<li>Commit to shipping. No matter what, finish the book, then release it to the world.</li>
<li>Embrace failure. Writing a book will be hard, and you will have failures. Be okay with that and give yourself grace.</li>
<li>Write another book. Most authors are embarrassed by their first book. But without a first book, you will never learn the lessons. Put your work out, fail early, and try again. It is the only way to get better.</li>
</ul>

Writing a book: Finishing

Your book could have helped people, brought beauty or wisdom into the world, if only your book came to be. Or worse, you wrote a book, but nobody cared about it.
Producing a work that sells is not just about writing what you think will work. It's about finding an idea that will excite you and your audience. You have to write a book that is worthy of being sold. To maximize your chance of finishing your book, you need a proven plan.

Most people never finish their books

<ol>
<li>Write and publish one chapter at a time, using Amazon Kindle Singles, Wattpad, or sharing with your email list subscribers.</li>
<li>Start small. Write a shorter book of poems or stories.</li>
<li>Start a blog to get feedback early. Eventually publish all the posts in a hardcopy book.</li>
<li>Keep an inspiration list to keep fresh ideas flowing. Read regularly, and use a system to organize and find the content you've curated.</li>
<li>Keep a journal, then rewrite the entries in a more polished book format, but use some scans of the journal pages as illustrations in the book.</li>
<li>Deliver constantly. Don't wait for inspiration. Inspiration is a byproduct of hard work.</li>
<li>Take frequent breaks.</li>
<li>Remove distractions.</li>
<li>Write where others are writing, like a coffee shop or library.</li>
<li>Don't edit as you go. Write without judgment first, then edit later.</li>
</ol>

Writing tips

Publishing a book is the easy part. The hard part is the actual writing. Here are 10 simple tips for how to write a book.

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