Distractions

One of Those Days (Episode 1)

I had one of those mornings yesterday in which I needed to hire a productivity coach. I got up late, which is always a signal that it’s going to be a rough day. My serious creative time happens from about 6:30am – 11:00, so whenever I get up at 9:30, I’m already behind the curve. [...]

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Why You Get Dumped On and What To Do About It

There’s a serious downside to flourishing: you become a target to be dumped on. People sense your strength of character and burgeoning wisdom and find you a source of comfort and calmness – then very quickly unload their problems on you. What they (usually) don’t realize is how much this affects you, because you’re not [...]

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How Creatives Make Money

Odds are, if you are reading this, you make money by leveraging your creativity. You write, design, create, or do something such that your ability to make money depends largely on your ability to be creative. I’ll pause and let that sink in for a minute. I said in passing last week that your productive [...]

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When to Swallow Your Daily Frog

“If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the big one first.”-Mark Twain You know how it goes. You wake up in the morning, and there it is. Ribbit! You pour your morning coffee, and there it is looking at you. [...]

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How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive

Update: I decided to place the form at the top of the post to make it easier to download. Grab it here: I’ve been a bit bottlenecked recently with some of my posts. I’ve been stewing over A Special Theory of Productivity and trying to figure out the best way to present it. Meanwhile, another [...]

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A General Theory of Productivity

The question “Why Am I Productive?” very rarely comes up when we’re productive. Usually, it’s when we’re not productive that we ask why we’re not being productive. Asking the question in the negative like that often gets us to quick fixes, but very often does not answer it in a way that’s helpful. Here recently [...]

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