Tag / productivity

by Nathan Coumbe

2 hours a day

What would your work day look like if you compressed everything into just two hours? Well, I tried it.

I gave myself two hours to complete a project that I was sure was going to take all day to finish. You know what happened?

I finished it in two hours.

Most of the projects (work or otherwise) take much longer than they should. And I think the reason is because we spend so much time working around them instead of on them.

We check our emails. Look at text messages. Do a little work. Check the news to make sure we didn’t miss anything important (we didn’t). Maybe do a little more work.

If only we could more reliably put our heads down and sprint through the project at hand. We’d create so much extra margin in our personal lives.

If you could give yourself only two hours to get your most important, what would that look like? Could you keep your job that way?

(h/t to Tim Ferriss for the nudge in this direction)

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by Nathan Coumbe

Who I learned from this week (July 23, 2021)

https://michaelhyatt.com/shave/

Michael Hyatt put together a crazy in-depth guide with four big parts. If you’re looking to up your productive and get more done while working less, I highly recommend you download this ebook.

Directed marketing
An absolutely fascinating post by Seth Godin about reaching your audience organically.

Serve a handful of people well, be remarkable, and they’ll tell a few others. It starts small, but the results are exponential.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-made-simple/id1569923210?i=1000526591946

Donald Miller’s “StoryBrand Framework” is the gold standard in effective marketing, especially for creatives, solopreneurs, and small business folks.

His team recently came out with a new podcast called “Marketing Made Simple” which I’m absolutely DEVOURING. Not only are the hosts incredibly engaging and funny, they give practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to market your business from beginning to end.

There are five episodes so far, each with a call-to-action to fill out your very own StoryBrand Brandscript (which you can start for free right here).

This is Where Your Temper Will Take You
A great article by Ryan Holiday that makes a compelling argument for anger being a primary cause of the Confederacy’s failure in the American Civil War.
3-2-1: How to find opportunities, and what it takes to improve
I’d like to specifically draw your attention to his 3rd idea in this newsletter.

What’s the single tiny step you can do to move the needle on your project or goal? Even if it feels microscopic?

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2021/07/21/on-pace-and-productivity/

Last, but not least, this article from Cal Newport shows us that how much time we look at collectively has a big impact on whether or not we look productive.

Scientists like Galileo and Newton had seemingly slow, unproductive days when looked at individually. But when you look at their accomplishments over the span of years, it’s mind-boggling what they did…

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by Nathan Coumbe

Streaks

What comes to mind when you hear the word “streak?”

One of the first images that comes to my mind is the tail behind a shooting star. It leaves a trail of light behind it, showing you its progression through the sky.

You can take that same metaphor and apply it to any part of your life:

  • Developing a daily creative practice (painting, drawing, writing, composing, etc.)
  • Growing a business (daily content creation, calling 5 people every single day)
  • Going on a weekly date with your spouse and not missing a week
  • Incorporating intentional movement or exercise into your daily routine

Just like with the comet, you’ll have a trail behind you, showing your growth and development over time. You can see where you started and how far you’ve come.

And the longer your streaks become, the harder they are to break. Can you imagine exercising every single day for 150 days? How terrible would you feel if you made it that far only to break it?

Jerry Seinfeld is famous for his creative streak: starting in the 1980s, he committed to writing one new joke every single day. That commitment seems to have worked out pretty well for him: today he’s worth in excess of $950 million.

My challenge for you is this: pick a habit you believe would have a major, positive impact on your life. Commit to it, track it on a calendar or an app, and get to a point where you’d be devastated if you broke it.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Reaping excellence

I came across a little maxim yesterday that got my mind going, so I wanted to share.

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

There is also a quote that pairs nicely with this maxim:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

– Aristotle

What is it that you repeatedly want to do? If you did it often enough, do you believe you would truly develop excellence in that habit?

Perhaps you should ask a related question: if what you are doing now isn’t something in which you want to develop excellence, what do you repeatedly think about? Once you have an idea in mind, you can then apply it to the maxim.

For example, let’s say that a person is constantly thinking about art, but only thinking, never creating any herself. We’ll start there.

“Sow a thought…” she is constantly thinking about and admiring the artistic work of others.

“Reap an action…” the aspiring artist decides to take drawing lessons and vows to draw a little bit every day, no matter how small it might be.

“Sow an action…” drawing each and everyday becomes second nature.

“Reap a habit…” she no longer even thinks about if she will draw today; the only thought on her mind is what to draw. A habit is developed.

“Sow a habit…” drawing has become second-nature to her now. It’s as habitual as brushing her teeth or eating.

“Reap a character…” she has become, intentionally or not, an artist. It is now who she is, a fundamental feature of her character. She is now one of the people she once admired.

“Sow a character…” you can see the rest. Her destiny is whatever she decides to make it at this point. She has already developed the skills and habits needed to carry her far down the path of artistic success, whatever she decides that looks like for her. Perhaps it is a career in art, or perhaps it is just a wonderfully enjoyable hobby. But it is now who she is.

So, what is it about which you constantly think? How can you turn those thoughts into action, and then practice those actions often enough until habits form and a certain character you want develops?

“We are what we repeatedly do…”

Decide and act on that in which you strive to be excellent.

by Nathan Coumbe

Luck happens

Sometimes, it comes down to sheer luck.

You’re sitting in the right booth, reading the right book, and someone notices.

She comes over and asks what it is that you do; you proceed to tell her how you help people. Eyes light up, connections are made, recommendations are given to you about who else you can help with your craft.

What a lucky meeting!

And yet…if I hadn’t been working so diligently for months on my new endeavors, this lucky encounter never would have occurred. Had I been sitting in the booth watching Netflix, she would have walked right past me.

So yeah, luck happens, but it still pays to prepare and practice your craft so that you are ready when the lucky moments occur.

I’ll take slow, persistent effort sheer luck any day.

by Nathan Coumbe

Solve interesting problems

One of my passions, and pain points, is the state of modern education in the US. Everyone knows that it’s not working well: children are leaving schools, both public and college-level, less prepared for careers than ever before.

The reason is simple: schools are operating on outdated modes of education in which students are taught to sit still, obey, memorize lots of information, regurgitate it on a test, and then promptly forget everything they just memorized.

The creative ones, the wiggle worms, speakers, artists, drawers, engineers – they are all stifled in the name of obedience. Yes, I realize that to have 35 kids in a classroom, you can’t have them all doing their own weird and wacky things, but answer this question for me:

When was the last time you got paid to regurgitate information on a standardized test?

What is school for? Seth Godin asks this question often. I believe the answer should be to educate and prepare children and young adults to create, innovate, contribute, and solve interesting problems for society. It is not about asking, “Will this be on the test?”

None of the “tests” you face in real life are multiple choice, with answers you found in a textbook and memorized only to forget them a hour later. When an irate customer is standing in front of you, there is no clear, right answer. There is an answer that might make things better or not; it’s up to you to figure that out.

When a new idea is dropped on your desk by a leader, you have to collaborate with your team, find and utilize resources, synthesize information, and come up with a solution for the project. How is memorizing a bunch of unrelated information that is kept separate from other information in the spirit of division called “subjects” helpful in this regard?

Why not instead teach people how to solve interesting problems? Teach how to find answers to questions on their own, how to create connections between information across varying fields and periods of time, how to think, and more importantly, how to learn when formal education stops.

Greg McKeown triggered this train of thought for me in his book Essentialism when he wrote the following:

“What if schools eliminated busywork and replaced it with important projects that made a difference to the whole community? What if all students had time to think about their highest contribution to their future so that when they left high school they were not just starting on the race to nowhere?”

Greg McKeown, Essentialism

The Industrial Age in the United States has ended; factory work is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as much as parts of our culture want to hang on to it. Our schools cannot continue teaching in the same mold as as they used to, when everyone eventually went to work on an assembly line. Employers no longer need cogs in machines; they need creative thinkers and problem-solvers equipped with the skills of communication, collaboration, analysis, leadership, and learning (yes, it is a skill).

In short, we need to teach people how to solve interesting problems.

by Nathan Coumbe

It may not feel like much

It may not feel like much when it’s all you can physically do.

I’m speaking, of course, on producing, practicing, or creating when there just isn’t enough time in the day to get much of anything done. On those days, all you can do is all you can do.

And all you can do is good enough.

Write a few sentences instead of fretting over not writing a chapter.

Practice your instrument for 15 or 20 minutes instead of saying, “screw it” because you didn’t master an entire piece today.

Draw a doodle comic, not some magnificent portrait.

Go for a 10 minute walk rather than beating yourself up over the fact that you didn’t spend an hour at the gym.

Incremental improvement. Streaks. Baby steps. 5 minutes here; another 8 minutes there. This is how progress is made.

Change your mindset; realize that you are building mental fortitude and creating habits when you do just a little something each day rather than adopting an all-or-nothing mindset.

You might feel like you suck. You don’t. You’re doing a heck of a lot better than the person that decided not to show up today.

And if you can’t do anything at all, wipe the slate clean and show up again tomorrow.