The Weekly Briefly

This week's episode is longer than normal because it's jam packed with stories and advice from the past four years of making a living online.

I share ins and outs, fears and motivations, challenges and victories. Highlights include:

Why I quit my job to write shawnblanc.net for a living.

The launch of my members-only podcast and how I thought it was so audacious to charge $3/month.

The shift I see related to advertising as a significant business model.

Building and launching Delight is in the Details versions 1 and 2 -- including what I learned about how an idea needs to mature and grow, how my idealistic approach to marketing isn't practical, and how I felt like a fraud when I wanted to charge $29 for the complete bundle.

And my latest project, The Focus Course, and the challenges and fears I'm facing with it right now.

Episode Links

Beginning -- the post I wrote announcing that I was quitting my job

Delight is in the Details

How I self-Published My Book (the practical and personal aspects of building and shipping Delight is in the Details)

The Focus Course

On my weekly newsletter, The Fight Spot, I ask people what their biggest challenge is related to focus and doing their best creative work.

One very common issue is the issue of having more ideas than time. People have so many interesting, exciting, or important projects they are working on that they don’t know where to start. They feel overwhelmed by options. They have too much to do. And so one very common question is “How do I get it all done?”

I often have to ask myself this question. How am I going to get it all done?

Last summer, I was in San Francisco for WWDC, and I was talking about this issue with a friend. He’s an iPhone app developer and he literally has dozens of apps and web services out there. I ask him how he juggles his focus and priorities.

For me, at times I feel stretched thin with “just” my 3 websites and podcast. I know that I do my best work when I am head down and focused on just one project and it’s all I think about until I’m done.

But sometimes that’s not an option (or is it?).

My friend said that to have multiple projects you have to be okay with letting one or more of them be neglected for a time while you work on the others. And, in his experience, coming back to an app and working hard to ship a big update, he often wouldn’t even see a big spike in new sales. So the update wasn’t even worth it all that much in the short term.

Let me start by saying that I don’t know the answer, here. There isn’t one universal rule here. You have to trust your gut and know your situation to make the call if you’re going to keep juggling many projects or if you’re going to let some go to focus on one.

That said, for those of us who have several projects and ideas all going at the same time, how do we juggle them?

Here are some suggestions:

Identify your roles and goals: you need balance in your life, so step back and identify your roles (parent, boss, employee, self-improver, etc.) And make sure that you’re not spending the vast majority of your time in just one of those roles.

Reduce the scope: consider scaling back what “1.0” looks like, so it’s something that is attainable. And consider lowering your bar of perfectionism — my friend Sean McCabe says we ought to aim for 90% complete (instead of 99%).

Reduce your project load: do you have to be doing all the projects right now? Can one or more of them be put on pause? Instead of doing three projects all simultaneously, can you do one at a time? Even on a week-to-week basis?

Get help: consider delegating and/or hiring others to help you.

Learn to say no to your own ideas: In The Focus Course, there is a day dedicated to ideation and strengthening our creative imagination. One of the benefits to this exercise is that you learn you have more ideas than time, and you don’t have to be a slave to your good ideas. We all will have ideas that we want to do, but the existence of them doesn’t mean we are now obligated to flesh them out.

Spend less time on counterfeit rest: things like television, video games, social media, mindless internet surfing — these things can be time sinks. Moreover, they don’t leave us feeling refreshed, motivated, or recharged. You most definitely need breaks and time to rest, but there are some great ways to do it other than zoning out.

Plan ahead: your productive tomorrow starts today. What is one thing you can do now that will improve life for your future self? Go to bed on time, set out your clothes for tomorrow, write down the first thing you’re going to do when you sit down to work in the morning, etc. This will give you a head start on your projects.

Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar:

You’re stressed out at work, because there’s a big project coming up. The deadline is looming. So you cancel your plans Friday night and work late. You go in to work on Saturday and Sunday, working over the weekend. And then come Monday you stay all through the week.

Why is it that when things get tough and work needs more attention, we so quickly deem everything else as less important? In order to do our best work as fast as possible, we cut out relationships, rest, exercise, etc. Yet these are the very things that give us energy, clarity, and keep us sane.

In her book, ‘Inner Excellence’, Carol Osborn (co-founder of Overachievers Anonymous) writes: “There has to be something more in in life than success born at the expense of your personal and spiritual needs and values.”

Anxiety and stress over time decrease our ability to perform.

* * *

We hear a lot about work life balance: that having meaningful relationships, eating healthy, exercising, getting rest and taking breaks from work, learning, having fun, etc.

This is what “Thriving in the Midst of Tension” is all about. It’s about having a support system in place, having health in our whole life, and finding joy in the journey.

If we tell ourselves that I’ll be happy once I can meet “ABC” goal, the problem is that the goalposts are always moving. You got a nice car, now you have to get a nicer car. You have 1,000 twitter followers, now you have to get 2,000. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades. Etc.

Or, our happiness is dependent upon the state of our inbox and to-do list. When there’s a stack of emails to go through, we’re low. When we have inbox zero, we’re high.

How many of us are putting off rest and happiness until we buy just one more thing or accomplish just one more goal?

People say find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. But I love to work. Find a job you love, and you get to work every day of your life.

In his book, The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor makes the case that success doesn’t bring happiness. But, rather, happiness will lead to success. And not just that the happy person feels successful (which they do), but that the happy person also attains the levels of success for which others are clamoring toward. Meaning: The Happiness Advantage is that happiness gives you and your team a competitive edge.

Put another way, if you think that once you attained a certain level of success in your career or finances that then you’ll be happy, then it’s likely that neither will happen. But if you choose to be happy now, then you it’s likely that you’ll also be successful.

* * *

In our “choose yourself” economy, many people are looking to build an audience. And I think especially so within those of you who are listening to this show.

I’m a huge proponent of Kevin Kelly’s idea of 1,000 true fans — it was how I was able to make a living writing and publishing my websites.

But when you seek to build 1,000 true fans you’re also quite likely to get 10,000 haters along the way. Well, it just seems like 10,000. The vocal minority who think what you do is a waste of space, is noise in the system, is unoriginal, uninspired, or just plain bad.

The haters are going to hate. And if we base our mood on their feedback then it will rob us of joy and happiness in the journey of doing our work.

In short, doing our best creative work is frightful. It could fail. People could reject it — or worse, be apathetic about it.

And yet, the secret to doing our best creative work is to have fun. To delight in the journey. To work from a positive state rather than neutral or negative.

Back on the 5th episode of this show, I had my friend Patrick Rhone on as a guest. We were giving advice for …

Raise your hand if you can relate to this statement:

“I can easily get so caught up a project that it becomes the only thing I think about all the time.”

Examples:

You’ve started a new personal project, and when you’re at your work or when you’re with your family, all you can think about is when you’re going to get back to working on your project.

You’re buying a house, and it’s all consuming.

You’ve just met someone special and he or she is all you can think about. (Not that a person is a project.)

You usually “bring work home with you”.

* * *

I know that for me, my tendency is to do a project in sprints. I’ve usually got one or two major work projects going on at a time. Each one takes between 1-3 months to complete.

George Leonard, in his book Mastery, might call me a dabbler.

The Dabbler approaches each new sport, career, opportunity, or relationship with enormous enthusiasm. He or she loves the rituals involved in getting started, the spiffy equipment, the lingo, the shine of newness.

Or an obsessive:

The Obsessive is a bottom-line type of person, not one to settle for second best. He or she knows results are what count, and it doesn’t matter how you get them, just so you get them fast. In fact, he wants to get the stroke just right during the very first lesson. He stays after class talking to the instructor. He asks what books and tapes he can buy to help him make progress faster.

There is also the hacker, who, after sort of getting the hang of a thing, is willing to stay on the plateau indefinitely. Meaning, he or she doesn’t bother going to conferences to learn more; in tennis she is the player who develops a solid forehand and figures she can make do with a ragged backhand; etc.

While I know that I certainly have little bits of all of these traits, I feel like I’ve taken my “dabbler” and “obsessive” characteristics and put them to good use on the overall-path of what Leonard calls “mastery”.

Meaning, my 1-3 month project sprints fit in line with my big-picture goals for my life (in business, relationships, and personal).

I’ve always been like this. And I think it’s one of my greatest strengths. Being able to have a laser-sharp focus on just one or two things means I can quickly build something that is high-quality, interesting, fun, has a lasting value, and I can actually complete the project through to the end.

But at the same time, this has its disadvantages: namely, that the tendencies of a dabbler and/or an obsessive — with that laser-sharp focus on just one or two things — means that I am oftentimes thinking mostly about the top idea in my mind.

* * *

In last week’s episode of the Weekly Briefly, I talked about rest and workaholism. That healthy work can keep our mind invigorated — especially when it involves learning and expanding our skill set.

But workaholism is also an addiction.

In his book, First Things First, Stephen Covey writes about how our roles will sometimes become “imbalanced” — meaning, there is a particular project or area of responsibility that we focus on at the expense of others.

And that, sometimes, this imbalance is healthy. He writes:

There are times when imbalance is balance, when a short-term focus contributes to our overall mission in life. […]

However, he also says that:

it’s easy to get caught up in imbalance to the point that it no longer reflects mission or principles. Rather than being mission-driven, we become urgency driven.

In short, it’s okay to be ramped up about a particular role or area of responsibility, but it should not be our perpetual way of life.

For me, as a husband and a father, one of my biggest challenges is leaving work at work when I’m spending time with my family. My wife is extremely generous and gracious, and she is always in…

I believe the reason people dislike Mondays is because they wasted the 48 hours in their weekend — they didn’t get any true rest, and thus never recharged.

They are more worn out on Monday morning than they were on Friday evening.

Benjamin Franklin

When men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good days work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.

Idleness does not equal rest. It does not recharge our mind, body, or emotions.

Let’s define “rest” as time taken to relax, refresh, and/or recover strength.

If your energy, attitude, or motivation are suffering. Then, ideally, after you’ve rested — after you’ve taken time to recover your strength — then you should see an improvement in energy, attitude, or motivation.

The average American watches 5 or more hours of television every day. Some reports say as much as 7 - 8 hours. And, we spend more than 2 hours per day on social media — Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Television and social media, in moderation, are fine. But we are a culture of excess.

Here’s my informed observation about why and how we rest wrongly:

We spend the day at work, doing knowledge work. We’re juggling emails, meetings, interruptions, checking our social networks on the side, and mostly spending all day long putting out fires and reacting to the urgent issues that arise.

This makes us mentally exhausted

We’re not very physically active (we’re sitting at a desk all day) and this leaves us physically tired

Thus at the end of our day, we’re un-motivated. We lack physical and mental energy. So we default to watching television as something to do because we just don’t have any energy.

I’m not trying to say that our jobs are horrible and that watching TV is horrible. But I think many of us are probably closer to the side of unhealthy work habits and excess time spent on TV and glowing screens.

Now, there’s no way I can unpack this whole issue in one podcast. There is SO MUCH research and information about how to properly rest, relax, and exercise. Not to mention all the studies about the good and/or bad effects of TV and glowing screens in general.

My aim today isn’t to prove a point because my hunch is that most of you already agree: you’d like to have more energy, a better attitude, and increase in motivation. I mean, who doesn’t want that, right?

Today, I simply want to challenge how we’re spending our time and to get us to ask ourselves if we can do better.

Do you often feel completely drained at the end of the work day?

Do you rarely have motivation to work on anything that’s not an urgent burning fire crisis.

Do you usually spend your evenings watching TV and/or scrolling through timelines on your phone?

If yes, then I think something you should consider is if you can learn to rest in a healthier manner? Can the cycle of urgency addiction and vegging out be broken?

Our mind, our body, and our emotions all need to rest.

There is a healthy way to rest and an unhealthy way.

What can we do that will re-charge our emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical energy?

In his book, Mastery, George Leonard has a chapter on getting energy for the journey of mastery.

He says humans wear out from lack of use. Physical exercise gives us more energy. Decisiveness and intent to act often gives us mental energy.

He recommends several ways to help keep up our energy levels:

Maintain physical fitness

Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive — meaning, be a positive thinker and be kind to others, but don’t pretend that negative things don’t exist.

Tell the truth

Set your priorities: be decisive about what you’re going to do; cla…

On today's episode: thriving in the midst of the tensions between our time, ideas, and focus.

Links

Honesty, Clarity, and Action

The Power of a Focused Life

The Fight Spot Newsletter

The Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress

Sponsored by

Sprint.ly:...

There is a good, common practice when it comes to debt elimination called The Debt Snowball. The goal of The Debt Snowball is to pay off all your credit card and consumer debt as quickly as possible. In some cases this could take several months if not several years, and so it can be easy to lose momentum along the process.

Many people think they should try to pay off the credit cards which have the highest interest rate first. But there is a better way.

To do The Debt Snowball, you put your credit cards in order of balance: with the card holding the smallest balance first and the one with the highest balance last. Then, while still paying the monthly minimum payment on each card, take all extra money you can and pay off that first card (the one with the smallest balance) as fast as possible.

Congratulations! You’ve now eliminated one of the cards you owe money on. Feels great, doesn’t it?

Now, take the money you were using to pay off that card and roll it over to the next card until that one is paid off.

As you can see, the momentum builds as you pay off each card. You feel good about the small victories, and you feel less stress as you have less cards you owe money on.

This method of The Debt Snowball is a great picture for how we can rebuild our personal integrity in terms of being able to follow through with our commitments.

Just like many people think the best way to pay off their credit cards is to start with the ones that have the highest interest rate, so too do we think that if we are going to make a change in our life it should be a big change in a substantial area of life.

We want to eat healthier, begin exercising daily, create a comprehensive financial budget for our household, write a novel, start a business, etc. These are all wonderful goals. But for many people, these goals will never be realized. Not just because they’re prone to distraction and procrastination, but because they have a history of not being able to see their commitments through to the end.

And so, in the same way that the Debt Snowball has you starting with the credit card with the lowest balance, why not regain your personal integrity and develop a habit of commitment by starting small and simple. In the quoted passage above, Peter Daniels suggests placing your shoes in exactly the same spot each night without fail. Do that for a month as a simple way to prove to yourself that you can make and keep a commitment.

Th other problem is that we despise the days of small beginnings.

We think that putting our shoes away in the same spot every night is dumb. And so we don't do it.

We also despise the marathon. We want to sprint for a week and accomplish all our goals.

It can be frustrating to “start small” with our goals. But making small commitments and keeping them is how we build the momentum we need to be people who keep our commitments. It’s a way to rebuild our personal integrity from something that is small to something that can become an unstoppable force.

On today's show: creativity, fear, and procrastination.

I think we can all agree that fear is the biggest enemy to creativity. We're born creative, but we learn to be afraid. After we've been hurt, wounded, scolded, rejected -- we know learn what pain feels like and we become afraid. We don't want to do something that could cause the pain again.

And we know that courage isn't the absence of fear -- it's the ability to carry on even though we're afraid. And the more we carry on in the midst of fear, the more courage we build up. Which is why, if fear is hindering us from creativity, the best way to do our best creative work is to show up every day. To build up the courage to be creative and to do meaningful work.

And if it's important that we show up every day, it means procrastination is at direct odds with doing our best creative work.

Procrastination robs us from gaining momentum in our projects.

It lies to us, saying that we should work only when inspiration strikes.

It has no intention of helping us hone our skills.

It's keeps us from doing our best creative work.

It causes us to project a reputation of inconsistency, thus hindering our ability to build an audience.

If fear is what keeps us from doing work that matters, procrastination is what keeps us from reaching our potential.

Episode Links:

How to Overcome Procrastination

The Fight Spot: My new weekly email newsletter

The Power of a Focused Life

Seth Godin: The Enemy of Creativity...

Sponsored by

Thou Shalt Hustle: A practical guide to pushing past average & finding your purpose.

The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

A few days ago I announced a new email newsletter I'll be sending out every week. On this week's show (which, my apologies that it's a few days late) I answer the question of why I'm doing an email newsletter when I already have a blog to publish to.

If you're interested in joining the newsletter, you can sign up at shawnblanc.net/newsletter/.

Sponsored by

The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

If you ever were to take a week or a month and keep track of how you truly spend your time every day, you might cry a little bit on the inside.

Many times the most important things we should be doing are ones which also feel mundane and tedious in the moment. And so we often distract ourselves from important work to do instead whatever seems more interesting or urgent in the moment.

There is more than one way to help us keep on track with doing our most important work day in and day out. And it goes beyond just white-knuckle focus and ripping our internet cable out of the wall.

It can be helpful to know what our high-level goals/values are for each day. And then we have a plumb line to see if the tasks we are doing fit into the big picture.

For example: many people have a goal of writing every day. Which is great. But what's the high-level value that writing every day fits into? Is it the value of making progress on their book? Is it the value of improving their writing skills? Is it the value of getting better as a communicator?

For me, I have three work values for how I spend my time. When I am "at work" I want to either be building, maintaining, or resting.

Building is doing work with the future in mind. This includes coming up with new ideas (many of which we'll never even act on, but that's okay), clarifying plans for a current project, making tangible progress on projects that haven't yet shipped, learning something new, etc.

Maintaining is doing the work with today in mind. Such as checking my email, updating WordPress, writing show notes, etc. This is the day-to-day work that is vital to be done, but in and of itself usually isn't a significant contributor to the growth of my business and my creativity.

Resting is simply taking a break from the work. Albert Einstein said: "Although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination."

All three of these are important, and each one goes in and out of its season of being the most important. For example, in the fall of 2014 I spent a lot of my time focusing on the building of the new Tools & Toys. Then, once the new website launched, all my time went to maintaining the site. Now that it has settled in, I'm once again back to focusing mostly on building our next project.

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The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.