Some questions for your website. Who's it for? How do they get here? When they come here what are they looking for? And what do you seek for that person to know, to learn, to understand? What action do you want them to take once they are there? Why should they trust you?
Setting up "Out of office" A corporate job gives us the option to take sick leaves or casual leaves and not feel guilty about them. We rarely feel motivated to work when we are having a migraine headache or feeling under the weather. Nor do we feel inclined to work while we are on scheduled
Non-emotional decision-making. Emotional decisions are short-sighted. They lead us into decision debt (sometimes even financial debt) which compounds with every iteration and tends to worsen the quality of our lives. Non-emotional decision-making or strategic decision-making is a skill. And it is one of the most important skills to improve the quality of
Making space. If we feel stressed about something in our life, it's very likely that we haven't made enough space for it. There's no time set when we'd sit down and work on it. Once we make that space, once we set that time,
Remarkable or Mediocre? Mediocre lies in the middle, in the average. Trying to make something no one hates also means that we make something no one loves. We can become remarkable for some, not everyone. There are extremes to choose and once we choose them, we can stand for something. The hard part
There Is All the Time in the World. The game with no goal and no limits, called “there is all the time in the world,” has the power to get you back in step, to bring you back to your center, to connect you once more with a universe that will be your partner. To embark on an
What's next? What's next? And once that's done, what's after that? That's all we need to know as a creative. When we focus on what's next, we are more likely to focus and ship. Fear uses the lure of planning & deciding
A professional takes care of herself. She gets enough sleep. She drinks enough water. She knows that only if she takes care of herself, she can take care of her clients. She is in this for the long run.
Do as I do, not as I say. "Do as I say, not as I do" is a safe place to hide. It's a way to not be on the hook. And it doesn't work. People do as you do, not as you say. They follow your example. They follow your lead.
Making progress on your creative project. “Where Is Your Hour?” ~ Seth Godin, The Practice Here's what you do: Choose one priority project. Spend 3 hours daily working on it, starting at the same time every day. No distractions. No multitasking. No work on any other project during these hours. You won't know
Messy work. Creative work is neither linear nor predictable. That's what makes it different from industrial-era work. It is bound to be ambiguous and the only way forward is through. It's good to embrace this fact instead of complaining about the mess.
The mindless space between actions. Resistance thrives in the space between intentional actions. It pushes to expand that space as much as possible. The nature of this space is mindless. We are not focussing or working on anything. We are simply distracted. Social media and similar platforms tend to elongate this space, whether intentionally or
The skill of finishing things. When we are in a slump, we can feel the inability to get anything done. We plan, we think, we discuss. Sometimes, we even start working on something. But we do not finish. And this mindset of delaying stuff can take over, pushing us to choose "later" for
Maximum or minimum? Maximum creates distractions. Minimum brings focus. Choose "What has to be there?" rather than "What can be there?".
Pushing against the voice. "What you are writing is not good." "This doesn't make sense." "We should come back to this later." "This will not work." The voice will keep doing its work. We can keep doing ours. The moment we press publish, the
Extremely slowly. Resistance likes rushing: fast thoughts, high frequency, multi-tasking, shifting from one thing to another without getting anything done. It doesn't like to slow down. If you want to write a blog, you can focus on only opening the tab where you write. It may take 10 minutes for
Who's it not for? It's important to figure out who our work is for. But it's equally, or maybe even more, important to figure out who it's not for. It's not for the cynic, the critic, or the random commenter who doesn't care. It&
Batching vs. iterations. Batching is great for efficiency. It helps us save time, money and effort. One can write 30 blogs in a day and then schedule them to be sent over the month. Iterations, however, help us build skills. The more iterations, the more repetitions, the better we become. Practising guitar 10
Your work is not for you. It's not about what you get out of doing your work. It's about the change you can make for the people you seek to serve. When you act sheepish, when you hide, when you listen to the voice of fear and don't show up
Putting it on the table. It's tempting to keep our goals and dreams in our heads. It's even more tempting to have our systems of achieving them there too. And to top it off, we keep the fears there too. When they are all in your head, we are in for
Becoming Seth Godin. Got more than 900 rejections in one year when he started out. (~ 3 per day) Wrote more than 8000 blogs in 20 years. (~ one per day) Gave more than 1000 speeches in 30 years. (~ one per week) Wrote more than 23 books in 20 years. (~ one per six months) It&
Tools for solopreneurs that can change your life for the better. Sharing a few tools that have helped me tremendously in the last few years. Beeminder.com - If you are serious about your goals and habits, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? The voice of resistance hates Beeminder and its idea more than anything else,
One thing at a time. We don't move forward by the extent of how much we plan to get done. We move forward by how much we actually get done. It's always better to plan for less and do more rather than the other way around. One thing at a time.
Lightness. Resistance loves heaviness and seriousness. It wants us to take ourselves and our work too seriously. Everything becomes a threat or a distraction trying to interrupt our serious work. This stops us from being childlike and playful in our work. What if, instead, we could embrace the playfulness and with
Patience and intent. Almost everyone starts from scratch. Artists who get millions of views on their videos started out by performing in front of empty seats. Blogs and podcasts with a million subscribers started with none. Even billion dollar businesses, like Apple, started with sales of tens or hundreds of computers, not millions.
