This is what I posted this week on Instagram. And I’m gonna do something different this time. I won’t give you the link to each post, if you want to check the same posts on Instagram, access the link at the end of this post.
Let’s start.
do you remember when you joined Bookstagram?
I was fascinated. I remember sharing my reads of the month in my personal account and my friends and family would never quite understand why I had a photo of a stack of books in my timeline. But since the very first day I started doing the same here, I knew I was part of a community. And now, almost 40 thousand people I don’t know care about my book stacks.
Because of that, I started feeling more comfortable talking about books and writing around here. Which helped me find a better writing voice and style. It made me a better writer. And so on.
Also, I know now that, on the other side of the screen, there is someone who is interested in my words, or that book I’m reading, or that reading tip I wanna share, or even that pile of good books to read. Not to mention my writing thoughts, which is always another writer’s thought too, or a great help for writers.
Yea… We all know it’s true that there’s a right place and a right audience for the things we do, but Bookstagram proved that to me. In this platform, that couldn’t be more accurate. We are the “book people”. But there are thousands of other tribes on this platform. Some nurturing good thoughts, some inciting bad ones. We gotta be aware and decide which group we want to become a part of and what kind of content we want to consume.
I always want to focus on nurturing good thoughts and discussing the beauty of words that unite people around the globe, just like Bookstagram does.
When I was reading REINVENT YOURSELF by James Altucher, I thought a lot about this concept he brought up: plus, equal, minus. We’re gonna talk more about that this week, but that concept would be a great summary of why I joined Bookstagram…
this principle has changed the way I look at content in social media
This principle has changed the way I look at content in social media and, to be honest, any interaction in social life.
It was developed by Frank Shamrock, one of the most famous MMA fighters. He was on Altucher’s podcast and he talked about it: a three-part system where PLUS means to learn from someone with more experience than you, EQUAL is engaging and connecting with someone with the same experience as you, and MINUS means teaching someone with less experience than you.
So, if we apply this system to social media, and especially our bookstagram community [and online writing as well], we will always find a PLUS, someone who’s read the books we haven’t, an EQUAL, someone who’s reading the same books as we are, and a MINUS, someone with whom we can share our thoughts about a book they haven’t read.
If you expand this to all social media accounts you follow, or pretty much any content on the internet, you might wanna avoid or get rid of the pluses who add nothing good to your life, the equals that are not really with you on the same journey, and the minuses who couldn’t care less about anything you have to say.
Trust me, it’s easy to identify them and even easier to avoid them.
Now, when I ask [people on Instagram] every week about what you are reading, I constantly invite PLUSES to the comment section, to talk about books that I never heard of, and I often find EQUALS in the comments, who are reading the same books I’ve read or AM reading, and I never find MINUSES, and I feel really great about that.
a bookstagram is just about books
A bookstagram is just about books, but a writer’s bookstagram…
When I started my account on Instagram, the idea was to have two separate kinds of content. In the morning, I talked about books, and in the afternoon, I talked about writing. And I did that for a long time.
As the feed evolved, and I started to understand it more, I reduced my posting frequency to one post a day, and you may think I let books and reading dominate the feed, but what I did was merge books and writing in daily posts, leaving the pure writing content just for Wednesdays and now here to my Substack publication just for writers.
But yea, I merged books and writing in a single post.
What I mean is that, as a writer, ALL my posts always have a writer’s perspective or a writer’s touch. This is why you read long captions here, most times carefully elaborated, and you see books next to my iPad, typewriters, and coffee in my photos. I’m here to give you a writer’s perspective about reading and I can’t think of reading and writing separately anymore. If I ever did, come to think of it.
I said this before, but I repeat: reading like a writer is not just for writers. Even if you don’t write, reading like a writer enhances your reading experience. And if you ARE a writer, I strongly recommend you pause or cut back on talking about writing on your feed, and do this instead:
Do the PLUS and find authors and bookstagrammers who can improve your writing. Be an EQUAL and find other writers AND READERS who share the same passions as you. Do the MINUS and share your experiences and ideas with your reader to help them improve their skills.
Does that make sense?
So if you follow me on Instagram, that’s what I mean with #writersbookstagram, it’s a bookstagram, yea, but from a writer’s perspective and an invitation for you to become a better writer, but also to become a better reader.
I want to delve deeper into this system
I want to delve deeper into this system by applying it to my own immersive reading time. The exercise is this: how would it be to be your own plus, equal, and minus when it comes to reading?
The PLUS is easy. EVERY book I read will say something I don’t know, show something I’ve never done, or put me in a situation I’ve never been in. I’ll learn from that. Extract everything I can.
EQUAL reading should be picking up books that talk about the things I like or my profession or my hobbies. Things I already know, but seen from a different perspective. For me, it’s reading books on writing or law books. And, I will find a PLUS there too. Always.
MINUS—and that’s where I think I fail sometimes, and what I think most people also neglect—is transferring what I read to notes, summaries, or reviews. And I’m not talking about sharing all that on the internet or in your social media account. I’m talking about making notes to myself, you know? We already talked about the plus-equal-minus system “outwards”. Now I’m musing on the “inwards” side of it.
The minus is keeping something like a second brain and solidifying that information input in my own words. Since I can’t annotate on books directly and I carry my phone everywhere, that would mean keeping ideas, insights, quotes, and notes on my Notes app, as if I’m telling my future self that I read this or that and at THAT moment, that’s what I thought it was worth it to “subtract” from all information I gathered.
I’m telling you, this whole plus-equal-minus talk we’ve been having this week is giving me a LOT of things to digest and think about.
the takeaway
All posts this week made me think a lot [like I said]. Not only about what I wrote but also about creating content.
You may know, I always plan my content for the week. But until I start writing my posts, I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna say. My plans are a list of one-line ideas for each day. Nothing more. But it’s only when I start typing and “talking to you” that it becomes something concrete. You know? Something I can also read as if I hadn’t written it.
And it’s interesting when you think that way… because sometimes I don’t enjoy what I wrote and that helps me think of a better way to express myself the next time.
But I deviate…
What I want to say is that, when we think about social media and the internet as an opportunity to create content, that plus-equal-minus system or even an extension of our self plus-equal-minus exercise, like I talked about in the previous post, can be a pretty effective way to unblock a whole new level of awareness about content creation.
I hope to take this with me for the next posts.
Now, here’s the link to my bookstagram account: @beardbetweenthelines.
Here’s the link to the book I talked about the whole week: Reinvent Yourself, by James Altucher.