Tag: Books

The Art of Asking (for Feedback): What Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk Teaches Us About Preparation

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge
Friday, January 30, 2026

“Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.”

That’s Carmine Gallo in Talk Like TED, talking about the preparation that goes into great speeches. I’m on Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge, reading Gallo’s book, and learning that what separates good ideas from great ones isn’t just having the idea—it’s being willing to test it.

But what does that actually look like in practice?

Let me show you what it looked like for Amanda Palmer.

The Tour Before the Tour

If you’ve watched Palmer’s TED talk “The Art of Asking,” you know how it feels—raw, authentic, like she’s having a conversation with 1,400 of her closest friends. She tells stories about being a living statue, about crowdfunding her album, about the vulnerability of asking. It doesn’t feel rehearsed. It feels real.

That’s exactly what great preparation is supposed to look like.

But here’s what you don’t see: the tour before the tour. Palmer didn’t just show up at TED and wing it. She took that talk on the road. Different venues. Different audiences. She gave variations of her prepared speech over and over, using each performance as a testing ground. Every time she delivered it, she was watching for what landed, what fell flat, where people leaned in, where they checked out.

And then—and this is the brilliant part—she used her community as her feedback engine. Palmer has spent years building genuine relationships with her fans, and she enlisted them in making this talk better. She asked them what worked. What didn’t. What confused them. What moved them. She treated her community not as passive consumers but as collaborators in refining her ideas.

This is the opposite of the lone genius model. This is preparation as conversation. Iteration as relationship. The speech got better because she let people help her make it better.

The Risk of Real Feedback

Think about what that actually means: Palmer valued her idea enough to test it. To expose it to feedback when it was still rough. To risk hearing that parts of it didn’t work.

Most people are so protective of their ideas that they either never share them at all, or they wait until they think it’s “perfect”—which usually means they’ve polished it in isolation until it’s lost all its rough, human edges.

Palmer did the opposite. She put her rough draft in front of real people and let them tell her the truth.

This applies to so much more than public speaking.

Writers do this with beta readers—trusted people who read your manuscript before it’s finished and tell you what’s working. Stand-up comics do this every single night in small clubs, working out new material in front of live audiences, adjusting based on what gets laughs. Software developers do this with user testing. Artists do this with gallery shows and studio visits.

The best work comes from feedback loops, not from isolated genius.

What This Looks Like for Me

Right now, I’m waiting for my wife and son to finish reading my novel manuscript before I dive back into revisions. I could have ignored their feedback and just polished it on my own. But my idea—this story I’ve spent so much time on—is worth the effort of getting real feedback from people I trust. Their insights will make it better than anything I could do alone.

And the 7-40 Challenge itself is a feedback loop. Every blog post I publish gets responses. Every video on social media gets views. I’m documenting my transformation in real-time, and feedback tells me what’s resonating and what’s not. I’m not waiting until Day 280 to share “perfect” results. I’m sharing the messy middle right now and letting the feedback help shape what this becomes.

That’s preparation as conversation. That’s using community as my feedback engine.

The Takeaway

Your community, your beta readers, your test audiences—they’re not a weakness in your process. They’re not a sign that you couldn’t figure it out on your own. They’re part of the preparation. They’re how good ideas become great ones.

So here’s what Day 30 taught me: If your idea is worth doing, it’s worth testing. Put it in front of people before you think it’s ready. Use your community as your feedback engine. Be willing to hear what’s not working. Iterate.

Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.

And sometimes that effort looks like asking for help.

Day 30: Complete ✓

All seven habits executed. Three-quarters through Round 1.

Round 1 Progress: 30/40 days (75%)

Assessment Week begins in 11 days.

See you tomorrow for Day 31.

When Good Ideas Become Relics: Day 26 and the Hard Work of Letting Go

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 26 of the 7-40 Challenge
I just finished Michael Hyatt’s book Your Best Year Ever.

And then he said something that I can’t stop thinking about:

If you have a goal that you’ve never been able to fully achieve, maybe it’s time to just let it go.

I finished the book and had to ponder that for a long time.

The Ideas I’ve Carried for Years

I have ideas that have been with me for years. Projects I wanted to work on. Tasks I wanted to accomplish. Dreams I’ve nurtured and protected and promised myself I’d get to “someday.”

Many of these ideas are near and dear to me.

But Hyatt’s words won’t leave me alone: Maybe it’s time to just let it go.

Because if I’m honest? Some of these ideas are relics of a time gone by. They belonged to an earlier version of me—a version that had different priorities, different resources, different seasons of life.

I think we do with ideas what we do with children. When the idea is young, we hold it close. We nurture it. We help it grow. We tell ourselves stories about what it will become.

And we get attached. But unlike children, ideas don’t grow up on their own. That is where the metaphor breaks down.

The Weight of Carrying Dead Dreams

Here’s what I’m realizing on Day 26: some of the ideas I’ve been carrying aren’t just old. They’re dead.

But I’ve been too sentimental to bury them.

I keep them on my “someday” list because letting them go feels like admitting defeat. Like I failed. Like I gave up.

But what if holding onto them is actually what’s keeping me from the work I’m supposed to be doing right now?

The 7-40 Challenge exists because I finally said: “This year, I have things I want to accomplish now. These 7 habits will take me there.” Not the other twenty ideas I’ve been carrying. Not the projects from five years ago that still sound good. Just these seven. For 280 days.

And making that choice meant saying goodbye to a lot of other ideas.

Some of them deserved to be set aside. They were good ideas for a different season but not for this one.

But some of them? I’ve been dragging them along for years, and it’s exhausting.

What Hyatt Made Me Face

There’s a project I’ve wanted to work on for almost a decade. Every year, I tell myself this is the year I’ll finally do it. Every year, life gets in the way. Or I lose momentum. Or I realize I don’t actually have the time or resources it would take.

But I keep it on the list. Because letting it go feels like losing a piece of who I thought I was.

Hyatt’s words won’t let me hide from that anymore: If you have a goal you’ve never been able to fully achieve, maybe it’s time to just let it go.

Maybe it’s not failure. Maybe it’s freedom.

Maybe the person I’m becoming doesn’t need that project anymore. Maybe it served its purpose just by existing—showing me what I wanted to care about, even if I never actually did the work.

And maybe—this is the hard part—maybe I loved the idea of it more than I ever loved doing the actual work.

Letting Go So Something Else Can Live

I don’t have all the answers on Day 26. I don’t know which ideas stay and which ones need to be released.

But I know this: I can’t hold onto everything.

Because we’ve been made in the image of God, we are naturally creative. Ideas will keep coming. There will always be new projects, new dreams, new “what ifs.”

But I only have so much time. So much energy. So much life.

The work of Day 25 isn’t just doing my seven habits. It’s sitting with Hyatt’s words and asking: Which ideas am I carrying out of nostalgia instead of mission? Which ones do I let go of?

And then—this is the really hard part—thanking them for what they were and letting them go.

So something else can live.

Day 26: Complete ✓

All seven habits executed. Another perfect day in the books.

Round 1 Progress: 26/40 days (62.5%)

See you tomorrow for Day 27.

Day 23: The Video I’ve Been Avoiding For Years (And Why It’s Finally Out There)

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Twenty-three days into the 7-40 Challenge, and I did something I’ve been calling “too difficult” for years.

I filmed my first YouTube video. Posted it. Extracted clips with OpusClip. Distributed them to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts.

It’s rough. It’s not my best work. The descriptions aren’t perfect. The tags aren’t optimized. I’m not even sure anybody will see it.

But it’s out there. Right here actually.

And that’s what matters.

The Friday Weigh-In

This morning I stepped on the scale: 282.2 pounds.

Day 1, I was 289.5. That’s 7.3 pounds down in 23 days.

I’m establishing Friday as my official weekly weigh-in day. Every Friday, I’ll report the number – up, down, or plateau. No spin. Just data.

7.3 pounds in 23 days. The system works.

But today isn’t about the weight. Today is about the thing I’ve been avoiding.

The Thing I’ve Been Avoiding

Social media.

Not just posting on social media – I’ve done that before. But actually BUILDING a presence. Filming videos. Putting myself on camera. Creating content that might inspire the 1,000 people I want to reach.

I’ve been calling it “too difficult” for years. I’ve said I don’t understand it. I’ve watched other people build audiences and thought “why can they figure it out so easily when I can’t?”

The truth? I’ve been protecting myself from vulnerability.

It’s easier to blog in obscurity than to film a video where people can see my face, hear my voice, and judge whether I’m authentic or full of it.

But here’s what I realized reading Michael Hyatt’s chapter on Risk this morning:

Publishing today is more important than perfect.

The Hook That Broke the Pattern

I asked myself: “Can you name one thing right now that you’ve always wanted to do that you’ve been avoiding?”

For me, it was this. The video. The social presence. The public documentation that goes beyond written words.

So I took the outline we’d built, hit record, and started talking as if I was speaking to a friend.

I didn’t script every word. I didn’t rehearse. I just went with the rough outline in my head and answered each section naturally.

Toastmaster training kicked in – I’m actually pretty good at speaking extemporaneously if I have an outline. I talked through:

  • The hook (name your avoided thing)
  • My story (47, stuck in “someday” mode for 20 years)
  • The 7-40 Challenge system
  • The data (7.3 lbs, 97 chapters, 23 perfect days)
  • The mission (1,000 people need living proof, not theory)
  • The call to action (start now, comment your avoided thing)

Seven minutes. One take. Done.

OpusClip Made It Easy

Then I did something I wasn’t planning to do today: I signed up for OpusClip.

The whole workflow I’d been overthinking? It was actually easy.

Upload the video. Let the AI identify viral moments. Download the clips. Post to Instagram and TikTok directly from the platform.

I’m on the starter plan right now – wanted to try it before committing to pro. But honestly? It worked exactly like it was supposed to.

Three platforms. Multiple clips. One creative hour.

Why It’s Not My Best Work (And Why I Posted Anyway)

I don’t have the appropriate hashtags. The titles aren’t SEO-optimized. The descriptions are bare-bones. All the “crap that normally goes with it” – I skipped most of it.

I’m not certain anybody will see it.

But here’s the thing: even with perfect optimization, nobody was going to see my first video anyway. I have no subscribers. No algorithm momentum. No existing audience.

The point of Day 23 wasn’t views. It was breaking the pattern.

I did the thing I’ve been calling “too difficult” for years. I filmed. I posted. I extracted. I distributed.

I proved to myself that I can be uncomfortable and survive.

Day 24’s video will be slightly better. Day 30 will be better still. By Day 100, I’ll have reps under my belt and know what works.

But none of that happens without Day 23.

The Best Time To Start

Michael Hyatt’s Risk chapter hit me hard this morning. He talks about how meaningful achievement requires stepping into discomfort. How comfort equals boredom.

I’ve been bored with my own avoidance for too long.

So today I chose action over perfection. I chose vulnerability over polish. I chose NOW over “when it’s ready.”

The video is out there. It’s imperfect. It’s uncomfortable.

And I’m happy it’s done.

Day 23 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Workout A ✅ Reading (Your Best Year Ever – Risk chapter) ✅ Friday Weigh-In: 282.2 lbs (7.3 lbs down) ✅ Walking ✅ Calories ✅ Water ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour (First YouTube video filmed, posted, and distributed via OpusClip)

Twenty-three consecutive perfect days. The thing I’ve been avoiding for years? Done.

The best time to stop avoiding the thing you’ve been avoiding? Now.

See you tomorrow for Day 24.

Day 19: The Limiting Belief I’m Done Carrying

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been reading “Your Best Year Ever” by Michael Hyatt during my walks, and today I hit the chapter on limiting beliefs.

It punched me in the face.

The Limiting Belief I’ve Been Carrying

“Social media is too difficult to figure out.”

I watch others build audiences, create videos that get views, write posts that get engagement – and I wonder why they can figure it out so easily while I struggle. I have the desire to lead by example, but I can’t get my message out.

Here’s the truth I need to admit: I’ve been using this as a cop-out.

Sometimes I think limiting beliefs are just forms of laziness. We allow ourselves to believe them because it’s easier to stay small and not put the time in to really master what we say we want to do.

For me? I’ve always prioritized other things over social strategy. And the difference I’m encountering now – on Day 19 of perfect execution – is this: I want to stop wasting time.

I want to achieve these things for myself. And I want to use that experience to provide hope for other people.

The Real Cost of Staying Small

The crazy part is, I don’t know if I’ll ever really know what staying small has cost me.

I’m a firm believer in the butterfly effect. By making ripples and striving toward good things, we inspire others to do the same. And while I’ve tried to do that in my personal life for many years – hopefully people have seen it – I have not articulated the reason WHY behind what I do.

That’s a missed opportunity to lift somebody else up.

I can’t measure the cost of ripples I never created. The people I never inspired. The conversations that never happened. The transformations that never started because someone didn’t see that it was possible.

Why Now? Why This Challenge?

I think I’m like everybody else – you get old enough and you realize your opportunities are starting to slip past you.

You’re not as trim as you used to be. Your hair’s not as dark as it once was. You’re moving slower, aching more. All these signs of time passing, and yet a full list of things you still say you want to do.

For years I’ve read Dan Miller, who wrote “48 Days to the Work You Love.” One of his favorite sayings: “Don’t die with your music still in you.”

At 47, I’ve got music still inside. And I’m done letting limiting beliefs keep it there.

The New Belief I’m Building

Starting Day 20, here’s what I’m choosing to believe instead:

I have a message worth sharing.

We have agency in our lives, and it’s our responsibility to use that agency for good. By forming habits that serve us instead of working against us, we leverage that agency and make the world a better place.

Social media isn’t too difficult. It’s just unfamiliar. And I’ve figured out harder things than this.

I revised a 105-chapter novel in 19 days. I’ve executed seven daily habits with zero misses. I’ve written 19 consecutive blog posts while learning compound interest principles and teaching myself systematic transformation.

If I can do that, I can figure out how to create a 60-second TikTok video.

The Shift Starts Tomorrow

Day 20, my creative hour shifts focus. I’ve finished the first revision pass on my novel. Beta readers (my wife and son) are reading it now. While they give feedback, I’m building the distribution infrastructure I’ve been avoiding.

No more cop-outs. No more staying small. No more prioritizing comfortable over uncomfortable.

I have a message worth sharing. And starting tomorrow, I’m learning how to share it.

Day 19 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Exercise (Workout A) ✅ Reading (Your Best Year Ever – limiting beliefs chapter) ✅ Calories ✅ Water ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour (first novel revision COMPLETE – 97 chapters)

Nineteen consecutive perfect days. The limiting belief ends here.

The best time to stop staying small? Now.

See you tomorrow for Day 20.

Day 13: One Brick at a Time (And Why Compound Interest Changes Everything)

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

One of the things I’m learning most on the 7-40 Challenge—and what excites me most—is seeing how daily goals turn into long-term progress.

Here’s the math: A 1% improvement every single day compounds to a 37x return in a year. That’s not motivation speak. That’s mathematics.

You can erode a foundation one brick at a time. Well, you can also build one brick at a time. The principle is the same—small, consistent actions create massive results over time.

The Thirty-Year Dream

I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was fourteen years old. That’s over thirty years of “someday I’ll do that.”

Thirty years of wishing. Failed attempts. Abandoned drafts. Good intentions that never materialized.

In the late 2000s, I wrote a small children’s Christmas book—about ten to fifteen pages. I was proud of it. I think it sold two copies. But that wasn’t the dream. I wanted a full-on, full-length novel.

Last year, I finally decided I was going to do it.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought.

How It Actually Happened

Here’s the thing about writing a novel: you write a scene. You read it over. You write some more. The story keeps building. You have a decent idea, you turn it into a better idea through revision and notes. And gradually, something really cool emerges.

But it still follows this principle: you have to have repeatable daily goals and tangible milestones you can accomplish every single day to build toward larger goals.

They don’t just happen. You have to actually make time for them.

I started small. One scene at a time. One chapter at a time. I kept building, and before I knew it, I had a complete first draft: 105 chapters.

Where I Am Now

It’s a YA novel about teens with superpowers in the nineties. I’m not going to tell you more than that yet—I’m in the editing process and want to roll it out properly. But here’s what matters:

I’m currently revising chapters 61 through 65. That means I’m over halfway through the revision process on a 105-chapter manuscript.

Thirty years of “someday.” One year of actual work. And now, halfway through polishing something I’m genuinely proud of.

Why The 7-40 Challenge Made This Possible

This is why the 7-40 Challenge has been perfect for this season. I work on seven daily habits. I’ll keep working on these seven daily habits. And in my creative hour, I continue to refine and revise this novel.

One chapter at a time. One day at a time. Compound interest in action.

By early this year, I’ll be working on getting it submitted for publication or publishing it myself. We’ll see what unfolds.

But what I know for sure is this: the dream didn’t change. My daily actions did.

For thirty years, I talked about writing a novel. Last year, I started. This year, I’m finishing.

That’s not luck. That’s compound interest. That’s one brick at a time.

Day 13 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Exercise (Walking) ✅ Reading ✅ Calories ✅ Water ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour (chapters 61-65 )

Thirteen consecutive perfect days. One brick at a time.

The best time to start building? Not looking back to what I should have done thirty years ago. Not someday. Now.

See you tomorrow for Day 14.