How many of you keep images turned off by default in your emails? I have been for 20+ years, but I know most people aren't as paranoid as me to avoid tracking.

In another thread, @Susan Moore writes: === I've taken courses that I didn't finish. But the amount of studying I did do, combined with related unfinished courses, and my own work and life experiences has all added up to this cumulative knowledge and insight I simply would not have without my messy inclinations and unfinished courses. === In that thread, I had an example of a course I didn't finish or implement when I got it, but which still gave me an idea that ended up being useful to me years later. This got me wondering, have you had experiences like that? I mean, have you ever found... A valuable idea or tactic or strategy that you got from a course that you never never finished? Or an idea or tactic or strategy that you got from a course, which you didn't use at the time, but which you used and profited from years later? Or a a tangential idea that somebody dropped in a course or training, which you ended up using, even though it was almost irrelevant to the main thing being taught?

I recently rewatched an old movie called Seconds. Uncomfortable, but also very interesting. I won't give away the plot here, in case you ever want to go see it yourself. I'll just share a quote I wrote down, because it was relevant to what we all do: "You know son, when I began this business, I was a young man with an idea. I wasn't aiming to make a lot of money. Helping others, help them to find a little happiness. Oh heck, not just the rich. You see, I got tremendous comfort in the thought that in my small way I was waging a battle against human misery. And I was, too! Except we do have a high percentage of failures. I guess that's to be expected, but it hurts me." If you are in the information selling business... I reckon you got into it at least in part to wage a battle against human misery, in your own small way. I also reckon that you have a high percentage of failures. Regardless of how good your information is. Regardless of how accessible you try to make it. Regardless of how hard you try to motivate people. People just don't get the results that you know are possible, or any results at all. Does this hurt you? Do you just shrug it off and say, "That's to be expected"? I'm curious about your experiences, what you think about this, and what if anything you do about it. Let me know. And if you like I can share what my experiences are and what I think and do.

A DEH subscriber (not sure he wants me sharing his name), writes in over email: === I'm signed up for the DEH, but sometimes I'm just sort of a bit lost because the questions are a little bit deep and require a lot of thinking when I receive it. Maybe this is unwanted feedback but is it just me or do I have to think about the question a long time before i answer it. hahah === I followed up and asked which prompts had him thinking for a long time. He wrote: === Alright never mind, it's only one lol. What reader question about my background can I answer today? --> this one for example took me a while to answer. But I would say I'm super like focussed on writing these emails and tying it to my offers, which I find hard to do haha. === So I'd say a few different things going on here: 1. If you do have reader questions, then it's a matter of having a quick way of getting at those questions. I personally use gmail tags. Whenever a reader replies with something that I imagine I could use in an email, I tag it with bej-email-fodder. Then later, when I'm looking to answer a reader question, I can cycle through those tagged emails quickly and find one that fits. 2. If you try to pull stuff out of your head, this is where the "a lot of of time thinking" and struggling happens. One fix for this is some kind of notetaking or journaling system (point 1 above). Another fix for this is the "10 ideas" practice. In my experience, it's much easier to come up with 10 ideas, without judging them for quality, than it is to come up with one "good" idea. The thing is, among those 10 ideas, there are sure to be 2 or 3 or more that are good, and often much better than what you would come up with by trying to come up with one good idea. 3. If you don't have any reader questions, then no amount of thinking or notetaking will help. In that case, the fix is to answer a question that wasn't asked of you directly. It can be a question you saw somebody else answering in a different newsletter... or in some online forum... or on the Dr. Phil show.

It's Memorial Day in the U.S. It's Whit Monday in Spain. (I'm not Catholic and I have no idea what Whit Monday is, but apparently it's cause enough for everything to work like it's Sunday.) Are you working today? If so, where? On what? I myself am working. My cleaning woman is here so I am on the roof of my building. There's a small pool here, one German girl tanning herself, a couple young Russian guys who I guess live in the building, a woman who must be the mother of one of the guys. She is drinking beer, they are not. Up above, I can hear a few seagulls shrieking and a police siren somewhere in the distance. I'm replying to emails that have built up over the past few days. And in a half hour, I have to get on a call with @Nick Bandy , to hatch evil schemes.