Sure, alarms are great for getting you out of bed in the morning, but you can use them for a whole lot more. You can schedule an alarm to go off at anytime, for any reason you choose.

You can use alarms to build better creative habits, like setting an alarm to remind you to write in your journal at a certain time each day. Give it a few days, and like Pavlov’s dog, you’ll start to salivate on the ringing of the bell, or in this case get to writing when the Apex alarm sounds on your iPhone.

After you follow through, acting on this trigger a number of times, it will become reflexive. That habit will get sticky and become part of your everyday routine. You’ll get excited that you created a new, positive habit and self-directed change. It’s powerful stuff!

You can design your actions—orchestrate them as you see fit.

You have these triggers at your fingertips. You can set an alarm on your phone and start pushing yourself to take action. Let’s look at how, with some examples, as well as pitfalls to watch out for.

My iPhone Alarms

I have a number of alarms set on my iPhone and use them as triggers throughout my day.

It’s really helpful to use alarms as triggers to spur you to take action, especially when you’re trying to establish new habits or break old ones; change isn’t easy. Setting an ideal schedule, one that maximizes your creative output, can take some work.

I have my daily work schedule set as a series of alarms on my phone, which remind me of the structure of my workday, which is broken down into a series of 90 minute to two hour work sessions.

Here is an example of my afternoon alarms:

Notice that my afternoon has few work sessions. Time is limited, so when an alarm goes off it alerts me to get to it:

• 1:00PM an alarm on my phone goes off, I prep lunch and eat, and when the next alarm goes off on my phone at 1:30PM it alerts me to get back to work—now.
• I have a 90 minute work session after lunch, so I try to keep lunch short, or else I’m literally eating into my productivity. Also, long lunches make me lazy, so I do my best to avoid them.
• The next alarm goes off at 3:00PM, signaling me to take a quick break. I have another 90 minute work session up next, following this short break—minus the break time of course.
• Then a final afternoon alarm signals it’s time to wrap up. I set aside 30 minutes for the end of the day to organize my projects, send last minute emails, update my weekly schedule, and decide on my most important tasks (MITs) for tomorrow.
• Then another alarm goes off at 5:00 PM, spurring me to put on my biking gear and go ride 10K or so. Or go do anything active for about an hour, while I decompress from another (hopefully productive) day at work.

This is my ideal afternoon and what I’m aiming for. These alarms help me more consistently keep to this half of my work schedule everyday.

A Note on Flexibility

Changes habits is messy though. You may succeed some of time, but rarely will you add a new habit and hit it all the time. Keep in mind the point is progress.

I listed my ideal above, but the afternoon is the time that I’ve struggled most with being consistently creative. It’s often my lowest energy time of the day. There are all too many afternoons that I take a long lunch, or even nap through my 1:30PM to 3:00PM work session. Meetings might come up, I might get a horrible headache, or I might procrastinate on any number of things.

An alarms sounds and it helps spur me to action—reminding me to get to work. I don’t follow through every time, but more often than before using alarms. My success rate is up because of them. These little triggers have really helped. They’ve assisted me with making changes at other times of the day as well.

Whatever habit changes you’re struggling with, expect setbacks. If you’re having a particularly difficult time changing a habit, then try segmenting it down. Look at what small action you can focus on, that isn’t too difficult, something you can build positive, forward momentum with.

Maybe this week, focus on that first half hour after getting back to work from lunch. Or focus on eating a lighter lunch, so too much food doesn’t weight down your afternoon. Each tiny change you make will add up, if it becomes a regular, repeated habit. This week, I’ve been making a bit of progress with my end of day routine and with eating a healthier lunch.

Set an alarm to trigger an action you want to take daily, to help push the habit change you are trying to make.

Boom! Stack those Actions

Take a look at specific times of the day and activities you want to improve.

We’ve looked at afternoons, so let’s take a look at your morning routine. What would make your mornings more effective? What’s one change you could make to improve your morning—every morning? How might it work together with ten other tiny improvements? Stacking habits together is powerful!

You might struggle to get up at your desired time for a week, but then adjust to this new goal. Then the next week you work on changing your breakfast, and eat more creative brain food, than what you usually eat. Add in some meditation another week, morning journaling or drawing the next, and now you’re starting to stack together some significant habit changes. It may take a couple months to stack together an ideal morning routine, but little by little you can do it.

With just one change at a time, you can start to build an ideal routine. One that fires off from just one alarm on your iPhone.

Keep in mind that to make lasting change, it’s easier to change one or two habits at a time, as more than that is just plain difficult. You can only juggle so many changes in a week and make new habits stick long term.

Keep it simple. Make one tiny change at a time, for one week, or two weeks, until the habit feels ingrained and easy to do, then add another habit, until you build up a powerful routine.

I’ve transformed different times of my day with this approach, starting with my mornings, then working on my evening routine, and now I’m really focused on improving my afternoons (which is my lowest energy time, so toughest to tackle).

You can drastically change your creative output over time if you keep stacking your habits together.

Add Actions or Take Them Away

What your’e doing with this is designing your life, and ideally creating optimal habits to crush your creative work out the door. You’re designing your days.

In addition to adding new, positive habits, you can also use alarms to signal negative habits to stop doing. This is particularly helpful if you have a habit you’re trying to eliminate and you need an extra push while you dig into making that change.

I currently have a reminder on my phone that goes off at 7PM every night, that says “Stop eating.” I’m trying to take away all that nighttime snacking that’s pulling down my health.

I did get some unexpected social support with that habit as well. My son borrows my phone at night to watch Netflix cartoons. So, he comes out at 7PM every night to tell me that, “Dad, your phone says to stop eating.” Ha, great reminder!

Another thing to consider is how you organize your routines. Try out different times of the day for different actions and see how easy it is to accomplish them, and how these new habits effect everything else you’re trying to do. For example, I like exercising in the morning, but I found that it was taking energy away from my early morning creative writing time, so I moved it to early evenings. That worked much better for me and helps me ease from the end of my workday into my evening routine.

Figure out what works for you.

Beep! Beep! Take Action

Try setting one alarm today, to change one tiny, daily action. What do you want to accomplish?

• If you want to start work at a specific time every day, or every weekday, then set an alarm to remind you to do that.
• Or, maybe set alarms that signals the start and end of a work session.
• Or, set an alarm that triggers you to tackle your most difficult task of the day.

Add just one alarm-based action this week, for one change you want to make, run it as an experiment. See if you can take action for seven days in a row.

Tiny changes like this will add up over time, the key is to make them consistent—too stick with making one change until it’s permanent. Add enough of these types of changes over time and it will add up to whole new, productive routines.

Get to it! Put those alarms to work. Start designing your life to maximize your creative output.

Graphic Credit: Alarm designed by SuperAtic LABS from the Noun Project.

Too many creative business owners stretch themselves thin. They have a million ideas on their mind and a number of projects they want to work on. They try to jump in a number of direction at once.

They push those projects—especially the ones they think will make them quick money. They aren’t super passionate about these projects, not caring deeply enough to make a critical difference. Unfortunately, this often leads to disinterest and these projects fizzling out.

Instead, before jumping in, first take the time to look at your passions and discover your purpose. It’s not easy to launch a creative business project. It takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and effort to breakthrough online.

You can greatly improve your chances of success, though, by aligning your internal drives with your external goals. There are three key components to consider:

1. Passion

Passion is not an airy, ethereal term. It’s heavily loaded with tangible meaning. Your passion for a topic is your: boundless enthusiasm, fascination, and obsession—you feel it run through you like the zap of electricity.

When you’re passionate about a project, success is not determined solely by external forces, but rather by your internal drive to: learn, grow, and master your subject. You’re so much more likely to solve complex problems that arise, push harder than would seem logical, and make those intuitive leaps needed to outpace your competitors and gain market traction.

This passion is fuel that you can use to light your creative business path. It’s a competitive advantage that you can leverage every day. It gives you an endless supply of energy to power the rocket ship that is your growing business.

Imagine the opposite, pursing a topic that you see as an opportunity, but have little interest in. It’s certainly possible to start that type of business, and make some level of progress, but that journey would feel like trudging up the steep incline of a large, muddy mountain—maybe climbable, but damn depressing and difficult.

Instead, start with your passions first. Look for a creative business project to pursue that feels electric to you. What interests do you care about deeply? What do you enjoy learning and doing every day? What might hold your interest for the long term?

2. Purpose

Purpose is all to easy to loose sight of. In business, we readily get too focused, too early, on things like metrics and bottom-line driven viewpoints.

As creative business people though, we aren’t well suited for empty business pursuits. Pursing income without purpose will leave us feeling vacant.

It’s important that you choose a creative business project that fits a purpose you can feel proud of. Your purpose in your creative business is the problem you’re solving for your customers:

• If you’re pursuing a freelance design business, then it’s the graphics you deliver to your clients that fit their business needs.
• If you’re a writer that is selling your business ebooks on Amazon, then it’s the solutions to problems you deliver in your books, those that your fans find useful.
• If you’re a coder creating a SaaS app, then it’s the problem that app solves, one that meets a real market need.

It’s more than that though. It’s also how your business fulfills your personal purpose:

• What are you as a creative business owner meant to do?
• What would give you the greatest satisfaction to pursue?
• What type of creative business would fill you with the most pure joy day in and day out?
• What would not only get you out of bed in the morning, but have the alarm clock ring fill you with a jolt of immediate excitement?

Both your business mission and your personal missions should be in alignment. The more so they are, the more fulfilling and purposeful your creative business will be for you.

Find your purpose and let it guide your creative business direction.

3. Profit

With your passion and purpose in alignment, you’re well suited to aim within that space for a creative business project you can earn a profit on. This is business after all.

Without profit you don’t have a thriving creative business, instead you have a passionate hobby. A lack of profit is—bottom-line—a business killer. I’ve seen too many interesting side projects dry up because they didn’t reach profitability, including a number of projects that I launched and abandoned myself.

Really, profit is the result of a healthy business. Profit is what funds your venture and allows you to grow further.

If you start your creative business as a side venture and it becomes profitable to a point that surpasses your full time job, then you can readily leave your full-time job. Whereas without that profit, how would you do that?

Profit is what you take home—giving you security with a healthy bank balance. It’s the result of all the creativity, and passion you put into a project.

Focus Your Energy

Aim all this energy, concentrate it like a laser beam, on just one important, creative business project. Go all in on it, or as close to all in as your current schedule allows.

But keep in mind, while important, profit is not your sole purpose. You need to discover your purpose—both your’s as an individual and the mission of your creative business. Your purpose and passion are what fuel your business—they keep it active and vital.

Your purpose is unique to you and your business. It’s can form the core of your brand and be difficult, if not impossible, for competitors to emulate.

Also, a tribe comes together under purpose and passion. It’s what inspires an audience. It’s contagious.

A business that is driven purposefully and ran with passion, is well positioned to make a sustainable profit. When all three of these are working harmoniously, you have a dynamic business on your hands—one that you can drive forward for the long term and feel great about.

What creative business is the right fit for your passion, purpose, and profit? What are you working on right now? Will it fill you with the same enthusiasm months from now?

Graphic Credit: Column designed by Timur Zima from the Noun Project.

At the age of twelve, I was introduced to my dad’s machine shop. I remember all those massive, metal beasts that dominated the place. Each machine stood at least double my height and screamed so loud when at work that we had to wear earplugs just to be near them.

I was given a stool to stand on and put to work on a large drill press. There were these little metal widgets, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, that I was instructed to put four holes into each. I’d place a new one on the press, grab the spindle-style handle, and drill holes into each one. Bits of metal shavings and the splash of oily coolant hitting me in the face, as I cranked through them.

By the end of the day, I had a barrel full of widgets completed, each with four perfect holes drilled through them. It was dirty, mindless work, but there’s something satisfying about staring at a pile of finished metal widgets. You feel real, tangible results from the sweat you put into the day.

Our creative business work is rarely this simple, though, with such a straightforward measure of our daily output.

The Overwhelming Weight of Our Creative Business Work

We get a shit-ton of email everyday, a constant, never-ending stream of twitter updates, fresh opportunities to evaluate, documents to pour over, goals to hit, and new issues to deal with. It’s a constant barrage of problems to solve—and many of them just aren’t as simple as drilling a hole through a widget.

Look at your action list, it likely has a number of complex projects on it, such as increasing the subscribers of your email newsletter, kickstarting your blog writing, building key relationships, or researching market trends that are likely to impact your creative business. These aren’t small tasks that you can knockout in a few minutes. These projects are intimidating and they may sit on your to-do list for quite some time.

So, what’s the solution? How do you hit your targets and crank through these projects? The first step toward increasing your productivity, and getting those large projects accomplished, is to drill down into them.

How to Drill Down Into Your Projects

For every project on your list, they each have a next logical next action to take (or a series of related next actions). This is literally the next physical action you need to take to move this project forward. It’s easiest to think of these actions in terms of verbs, such as:

• write
• publish
• email
• decide
• brainstorm
• optimize

Verbs are actions. What are the very next action steps you need to take on your project?

Priority is dictated by need. If one action has to be done before others can be completed, then your path forward is clear. If there are multiple early stage actions needing to be completed, then just pick one to start on.

Anything that requires multiple actions, can’t be done at once. Start a blog, for example, isn’t a to-do item you can easily complete. It requires a number of actions, such as buying hosting, setting up your blog theme, designing your brand, planning your topic, getting to know your audience, setting your publishing schedule, etc. Starting a blog is too large to knock off your to do list today, as it can take days, weeks, or even months to complete.

Tasks Are Tiny and Ready To Do

Look at how you can take these larger projects you need to complete, and drill into them, uncover all the sub-sets of actions that you must complete, then drill down further until you have actual tasks you can complete today.

Tasks should be tiny—measured in minutes and not days. They are items on your to do list that you can check off this morning. They are like small metal widgets, you can drill the needed holes in, and then chuck into the done barrel.

Projects don’t move forward without actions being completed. Take a look at your to-do list now and make sure each item on it is framed as an action, one that is small enough that you can readily complete it today.

Press Down on That Drill

When things were really humming in my dad’s machine shop, the metal was moving, presses were drilling, lathes were turning, coolant was spraying, the country music was twanging, and widgets were getting machined. Everything was firing away rapidly as each part was cranked-out.

Fire-up your day. Take your big creative business projects, drill down into them, and line up those tasks, so they are tiny, and ready to take action on. By quitting time, you should have a large pile of completed tasks, the hard-worked result from all the sweat you put into today.

In visual arts there is a concept known as white space. It’s also referred to as negative space.

Think of the metaphor of the glass that is half filled with water. It’s the other half, the empty half that is negative space. But, in art, this space is not just empty; this blank space is actually filled with meaning. Without the negative space, the full space would not have a positive charge; it wouldn’t exist, nor would the two halves create balance and make up a whole.

The key to aesthetic composition is the balance between the use of positive and negative spaces. You can look at a balanced mind from a similar vantage point.

The glass half full or half empty is a rhetorical device that paints a picture of your psychological worldview. For me, for quite some time, I tended to view the glass as half empty—negatively looking at life events, flaring emotions, and my past as being lacking—even as a series of outright failures. But recently, I’ve more fully embraced the negative space in that empty half of the glass.

There’s something beautiful in the unfilled space. It’s the negative space of our lives that gives every positive moment meaning.

The space we create around ourselves and in our minds is an unfilled buffer, one which allows us to concentrate on our creative projects. A single colorful dot is so much more active when it’s surrounded by a canvas of white.

Embrace the Half Empty Space

We allow a massive amount of clutter to take over our minds. We hold onto incoming information, requests, ideas, tension, worries, needs, and hundreds of unnecessary concerns every day. We open emails, and check updates frequently, when we should be concentrating on our creative work. We pile on more, and we take on more, thinking more input will spur greater output. Like hoarders, we pack our mental and physical spaces to overload.

Now let’s image that we could empty this space. Unpack all those boxes. Take the trash out. Start everyday with the focus that comes from a clear mind.

Leo Babauta writes about the concept of the stateless mindset. This is a programming concept. “It means that each request is treated anew, without memory of previous requests.” He writes about the power of clarity. How you can focus on the task at hand, while not getting weighed down by all the junk we allow to pull at our attention.

While it’s not possible to completely clear our minds everyday, like a stateless object in a computer program, a clear mind is a compelling notion. We can get a whole lot closer to this concept, if we create purposefully negative spaces around ourselves. Here’s how:

• Declutter Your Surroundings. How much crap do you have around your office. Piles of books, half completed projects, reminders taped to your wall—all of which are filling up your physical environment and competing for your attention. Instead, I work in a white room with blank walls. That’s my home office. I enter this room everyday with the goal of filling this empty space with meaning. Your work setup may not be as extreme as mine, but consider tidying up, and at least limiting your office clutter.
• Limit Your Distractions. How much is fighting for your attention when you’re creating—all those devices, all those steams, all that incoming noise? Give yourself the permission to turn this all off, so you can turn your creativity on, and readily get into flow.
• Download Your Brain. Create systems to hold your tasks, getting all your non-now actions out of your head. Any negative feelings or emotions feel like they are on the tip of your brain, then journal about them, which takes them off the front of your consciousness and frees up your mention load.

There’s more to it then just these few simple steps though, you can shift your mindset more holistically across your entire work and life. If you let go of your preconceived ideas, you’re open to the unexpected.

Create unfilled spaces. Once opened up, there is now room to let positivity in.

Make Blank Canvas Moments

This isn’t just about creating more or producing more. How many of you want to build meaningful relationships with people in your field?

Take a lesson from my friend David. He always takes the time to talk to everyone, be friendly with them, chit-chat, and open up a moment to genuinely engage with them. He may be at the supermarket, and in a hurry like everyone else, but as soon as he sees a familiar face he let’s all that go and spends a few minutes completely in that moment with them.

By clearing his mind of previous concerns, he allows for a real moment to evolve, and a connection to grow with that person. He isn’t so cluttered, or weighed down in that few minutes, but instead he creates a blank canvas moment. He takes all the paint off the canvas of his brain, allowing new colors to be splashed on. You can do the same thing at the next meet up or conference you attend.

The Open Opportunity of Emptiness

If you want to accomplish more, try clearing your mind, downloading your brain, and approaching new tasks with a stateless mindset. Create within a buffer of white space. If incoming distractions are fighting for your attention, turn them off. If your office is too noisy, then turn on a barrier of white noise to drown it out.

Create blank canvas moments, ones which are devoid of outside concerns. Within these moments you can focus on the project you’re currently working on—deeply in creative flow. Or really get to know another human, spending real time with them, invested in a meaningful conversation.

Are you creating purposefully open moments, so you can fill them with colorful meaning?

Graphic Credit: Canvas designed by Kelly Ness from the Noun Project.

My little side project here at Creatro had been moving along reasonably well. I was building up some writing habits and publishing blog posts at least once a week, but then in June I hit a block. I felt unconfident about my writing and it led to me feeling unable to write.

This happened because my ideal of what I should be writing kept ratcheting up. At first, I had a goal to write 1,000 word posts, then it was 1,500, then I was aiming for 2,000. I kept adding in all these must-have components to the writing as well, such as referencing original research, aiming for a specific format, and a number of stylistic goals. All this was connected to a larger vision of becoming a certain type of business writer.

It worked for awhile, I made some improvements, but at some point my dreams were too far from my reality of where I was at with my writing process and skills—there was a disconnect. It felt as though I was gliding down a wire, supported in the air, moving along smooth and fast, starting to see myself as a writing ninja, and then suddenly someone cut the wire. My confidence plummeted and my output stopped.

Has this happened to you? Have you been making progress toward your dream; then suddenly fell? If so, have you analyzed why this happened? Have you outlined how you’ll avoid this in the future?

The Problem With Big Dreams

You have big dreams.

You want to set your creativity ablaze, with polished output sprouting from your hands with energy that can rival Picasso. You want your side project to shake up your niche, make a name for yourself, make connections with the big dogs, and open up massive business opportunities for you.

Whatever your dreams are, they are unique to you. They are likely massively important to you as well. But those dreams, the big ones, which you might be disguising as goals, are really just roadblocks to your forward progress.

A new side project is a fragile thing, any fresh venture is. You’re fragile in this new pursuit as well. You’re learning lot’s of new things and are building a number of exciting, creative business habits. Any one of these new actions, especially early on, could easily lead to you missing the mark and stumbling. In fact, it will.

To build any new habit requires change. Change will never go the way you’ve imagined. No one does anything new that is worthwhile and doesn’t make a series of mistakes. If you have rigid goals, when you miss the mark, this can lead to a downward spiral of negative thoughts.

Your big dreams can feel as though they are slipping from your grasp. Fear sets in. This fear leads to inaction and for all too many side project this is the point where they die an untimely death.

The problem isn’t some mistake you made; the problem is the fantasy, that ideal you’ve set in your mind.

Our Fantasies Run Amok

Our fantasies, if given the opportunity, will take over. Imagination is a powerful force. It’s not easy to keep in check.

Instead of being present in our projects, focused on the task at hand, and completely absorbed int the creative moment, we instead live in a potential future. Each action you take, can’t readily flourish, if you’re constantly placing it into some kind of ideal future scenario—comparing and contrasting each creative step you take against what you’ve set up as the ideal.

Similarly, our minds quickly run to the past and negatively pick apart our progress, comparing it to some kind of ideal we’ve set for ourselves. Do you look at your mistakes, your failures, and feel depressed? Do they get you down and hinder your inspiration to create today?

By not embracing where your really are, you’re current reality, your current abilities, and owning that, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

How to Moderate Your Dreams

As with most things, dreams are not inherently bad.

If we drink one cup of wine a day, it’s good for us, but opening that bottle at breakfast will likely lead to overdoing it—and passing out in a hammock. Even healthy habits can hurt you if you don’t moderate them. One of my friends in high school ran cross-country track. He ran everywhere, hundreds of miles each month, then he blew out his knees and could no longer run; he overdid it.

Dreams are fine in moderation. Having a goal and reaching toward it is helpful to many creative business owners. A lofty ideal can push us to try things we might otherwise have never attempted. But getting too locked into this fantasy, and feeling bad when you’re not hitting it, isn’t helpful. Instead you’ll benefit from a minimalist approach to dreaming:

1. Put your dreams into a realistic context. This is the first step toward moderating your dreams. If your dreams are quite far from where you are today, and negatively hindering your ability to take action, then remind yourself that it’s okay to stumble forward. Make mistakes; take a step forward, and a step back, then a few more steps forward, and fall over, get back up, and do it again; that’s on target with the growth mindset of learning.
2. Go on a dream diet. As with dieting with food, limiting your intake, and setting some restrictions are helpful. With going on a diet with your dreams, your intent is to keep your fantasies in check. Either let them wash over you and fade away or purposefully put them on hold. Try sprinting for a week with all your fantasies left on the sidelines.
3. Embrace the moment. The opposite of living in your head, is to live in the moment, right now. The term for it is mindfulness. Work on being present in your actions, focused on the task at hand, and working with a playfully experimental attitude. Avoid, thoughts of, and especially comparisons to your fantastic ideals.

Our culture has a wonky concept of creativity. Yah, imagination is beautiful, fancy is fun, and dreams can be a powerful force, but the idea that they should be in the driver seat all the time is ridiculous.

Put Your Dreams in a Box

It’s quite hard to not let our dreams take over our consciousness, to not slip into bad feelings about the past, or concerns of the future. It’s hard to put our dreams to the side, so we can focus on playfully experimenting in our creative projects.

It wasn’t until I put my expectations on hold, and focused on the actions I am able to take, the writing that does fit my current abilities, that I started making progress again with my side project. My creative output surged forth again, and now from a more authentic place within me.

You can put your goals on hold and focus on today. Experiment with mindfulness—with putting your dreams in a box and locking them for a few days. See where it takes you.

Are you tired of following other peoples success online? Aren’t you just as talented and filled with just as much potential as they are?

If you’re not satisfied with the status quo of your life, your job, your income, your daily responsibilities, and your creative output, then you need to make a change.

We all have very little time to dedicate to starting a new business and building our skills. Are you willing to set aside even an hour a day to dig in—putting all your concentrated creativity into it? If so, what’s stopping you?

Likely all the numerous options—the sheer vastness of possibilities—has you overwhelmed. That’s certainly what I felt like; that is, until I shifted my viewpoint. You can simplify your approach by framing your creative business as a side project.

Small steps lead to great adventures. It doesn’t require a massive leap to begin a side project and start building momentum.

Sidestep Complexity

Tiny targets are reachable. You can see them directly ahead—sprint towards them and rapidly grab hold.

Tackling something complex is daunting. Where do you start? How many months of work would you have to put in to bring this idea to fruition? What resources would you need to build this?

On the other hand, a minimalist approach to your side project is workable. You don’t need huge resources or big blocks of time. There is just less overhead with little side projects. You can fit the project around all your other commitments and actually make tangible progress.

A Minimalist Mindset

If you have big ideas, and big goals, for your side project, that’s fine. But look at how you can break that down into smaller and smaller slices of that big picture. What is the minimum it would take to prove your creative business concept? What is one area you could improve your creative skill set in?

• If you’re looking to launch a blog, what topic could you focus on that would allow you to quickly stand out? With a tight focus and writing daily on a narrow topic, you can publish, get audience feedback, and stand out fast.
• If you’re looking to build a freelance design business, what is a single service you could rapidly start offering? You can ramp up your skills in that area, present a clear offer, provide quality samples, and get quick client feedback.
• If you want to build a software project, then focus on solving a single problem. I really like the app Clear for example. It’s one of the simplest to do apps available. It solves the problem of working with to do lists really well though. What’s one problem you could focus on solving?

By aiming your creativity more intently, you’ll see your skills grow more quickly in that area. Also, focusing on a small project, with narrow goals, means you can test rapidly, and work on incorporating feedback back into your project—pushing it forward through iteration.

So, what’s holding you back from jumping into a side project?

Expect the Unexpected

All too often we let our fears stop us from trying. We fear that we won’t live up to the expectations we set for ourselves. We place large goals on top of ourselves, like weights that hold us down.

Experimentation is the key to a successful side project. That’s difficult to do, if you frame your project as a massive undertaking with lots of pressure on it.

Instead, approach your side project as a small, passionate undertaking. One you happily jump into, with a growth mindset—a childlike eagerness to learn, play, and grow. You don’t see kindergarteners stressing over their projects; they are too busy having fun painting. This is the kind of energy to bring to your side project.

Experiments Don’t Fail

Paul Jarvis has some great tips on how to treat your side project as an experiment. His opinion is that: “Experiments don’t ‘fail’—they simply prove or disprove a hypothesis.”

When viewed from this perspective, your side project, and each step you take in it, is just a series of experiments. You learn from the results of each experiment—good or bad—and adjust as you move forward. Your project and big picture goals change and evolve with each experiment.

Some experiments result in wins and others will miss the mark. That’s not surprising when experimenting. It’s best to set your mindset accordingly. Lowering your expectations opens up the door for the unexpected to walk through.

Every scientist has a series of failed experiments along the way to a breakthrough, but they really aren’t failures, just steps toward the solution. Every creative has the excess of their boundless enthusiasm showing as colorful half-completed renderings scattered around their studio—only their best work, often filled with happy accidents along the way, making it into their portfolio.

What you’re doing with your side project is positioning yourself for a potential breakthrough. You’re dipping into the unknowable, on a daily basis, and playfully poking at it.

Embrace the Idiotic

Pursuing your passion, and taking an experimental, playful approach to your side project creates fertile ground for you to plant something unique in. This is where you grow from.

At First, Leave Money Out of the Equation

Many of the most successful creative businesses, didn’t start as businesses at all, but rather someone following an obsession well past the point of business sense or with a complete disregard, early on, for earnings. They spent hours learning, absorbing, and just making stuff. This is how I became a graphic designer.

I didn’t jump into design with a clear sense of how I’d make money at it, but rather I just had to learn it, master techniques, and internalize them. I ran through books on design, made all sorts of passion projects—creating characters, brands, sites, and hand lettering—adding more levels of knowledge, and creative confidence, with each step along the way.

The Crackle of Creativity

I really admire successful creatives that make side projects that resonate with buzzing energy, those passion projects that were created because they just had to made, such as Jessica Hische’s side project of drawing drop caps. She created experimental, illustrative alphabets to push her skills. You can see not just her care in this project, but her obsession with each letter in it. Her letters drip with creative love.

All that effort, while not originally a business pursuit, led to several jobs and clients for her (including The New York Times, Penguin Books, and Google). These are the kind of doors that will open for you, if you put your energy into a passionate side project, one that is really personal and engaging to you. To get started, you don’t need a clear business plan, just a drive to create. Your business plan will emerge along the way.

The Spark of Serendipity

Don’t be afraid to be a bit stupidly serendipitous in your side project pursuit. It works for Tobias van Schneider, read about his advice over on Fast Company on the benefits of letting yourself be stupid in your side projects.

That pure, naive creative meandering is where magic comes from. It’s the spark that ignites a creative business.

Dig In

You don’t need truckloads of time to make something creative, cool, super-personal, and that captures the spirit of your endeavor. You do need to dig in and commit though.

Make a Commitment

Sit down today and look over your calendar. What hour a day can you block off and make a concentrated effort in?

If you can’t make a daily commitment, then you’ll never get off the sidelines. You’ll continue to watch others increase their creative skills, release projects that lead to bigger gigs, and open up new doors for them. You’ll continue to watch their creative businesses grow, while you stagnate in inaction.

• If you’re a stay at home parent, then work on this when the kids are distracted—in those short-lived down moment you can carve out.
• If you’re a freelancer and looking to tackle more creative assignments, then first assign that ideal project to yourself. Use it as a showcase to land the projects you want.
• If you’re a blogger, then write daily. Release your ideas onto the world. Write an ebook or launch a niche blog as a side project. Take risks and push every piece of content out as a new experiment.
• If you’re a student, don’t settle for your teachers dictating your growth. Set the parameters for your own side project—one that will push your creativity and pull together your personal interests.

Whatever your goals are, you can narrow them down to fit into the time you do have for your project. You can accomplish a lot on the side, without doing a whole lot more.

Create with Consistency

You can aim small, as long as you are consistent in your pursuit.

Work on making repeatable creative habits. Get into a routine. This idea of the scatterbrained creative is a myth. The more organized and diligent you can be with your creative pursuit, the more consistent you’ll learn, and the greater your output will be.

Many successful creative businesses started as tiny side projects, without an initial full-time investment. Think of this project as your creative outlet, that time you look forward to every day, as something very precious and special you can work on daily.

Your ideal time may be early in the morning before your primary job. Or it might be on nights and weekend. Ultimately, a side project, by it’s very definition fits around all your other commitments. Make this little time you have matter.

Pursue with Purpose

Side projects are purposefully small. They are produced on the side of the rest of your life, before your full-time gig, or after your core responsibilities for the day are taken care of—in that bit of time you can carve out for them.

Allow Your Side Project to Develop Naturally

Few successful businesses start as massive projects with unrealistic goals. Any business requires a tremendous amount of effort to breakthrough. If you frame your creative business pursuit as a side project, you’ll reduce the complexity, as well as the fear, and leave room for the unexpected to arrive. It’s through creative leaps and a succession of a number of small, simple experiments that your project will unfold.

You can bring a determined focus to a small side project. In time, this project will become yours—you’ll grow to own it. You’ll know every nuance of it at a cellular level, having run your hands along every detail of it daily.

This project is your outlet—one you have a need to pursue. It’s not just your passion, but your obsession. It’s the topic you cant wait to write about. It’s the craft that you can’t not work on. It’s the tiny business you can’t wait to experiment with everyday. It’s you banging your head against your computer screen—loving and hating every minute of it.

Your Creativity is a Catalyst

Making something small does not make it any less meaningful. Also, it doesn’t mean it is any less likely to grow. The more energy you put into your side project, the more personal and meaningful work you fill it with, the more likely it will transform into something unique and noteworthy that is packed with potent potential.

If you’ve been thinking about starting a creative business, but haven’t jumped in, then now is the time to do it—make that first small step toward creating your side project today, then be sure to keep it moving.

Graphic Credit: Lego designed by jon trillana from the Noun Project.

A mistake is simply a lesson to learn from. To get good at anything, obsolutely requires hundreds, if not thousands of mistakes as we move from novice to mastery.

When writing your first blog post, trying to launch a new video on YouTube, or taking your initial steps into social media, you’re taking a risk—one that feels difficult if not heart-stopping.

Fear of failure can readily prevent you from taking the action you need to progress. But, is failure really a problem, or is it just a natural process of learning and growth? How you view obstacles, how you view the world, and how you view yourself, all impact your ability to grow.

Do challenges outside your expertise paralyze you? Or do they spark interest and compel you to experiment?

In kindergarten, we all embraced a mindset of growth. We quickly picked up a paintbrush and splashed color all over the page—without anxiety. It wasn’t intimidating, but rather fun.

We jumped into new projects with both of our hands, throwing around paper and glue, while we ate up colorful concepts, like the happy little monsters we were. Effort was just play. Learning was a natural process of exploration. That approach need not end in kindergarten.

Successful entrepreneurs keep pushing and playing throughout their lives—they never let this kindergarten mindset dissipate.

Going Back to Kindergarten

As a professional blog editor, writing isn’t new to me. Writing is difficult—for sure. Making it a daily habit, and writing well takes hard work, but it’s within a skill-set I feel comfortable with. It isn’t as difficult as jumping into something I have little to no experience with. That is a challenge on another level.

Learning to code, or cook, or draw, or a new language—any skill you haven’t dived deeply into—is a brand new experience. It’s like going back to kindergarten, where you will learn entirely new concepts for the first time, and be exposed to techniques unfamiliar to you.

It’s exciting, but standing at the beginning can just as quickly fill you with anxiety.

When I draw, I often feel like a failure before I even pick up a pencil because my work is so amateur. I’m used to taking written drafts and polishing them until they shine, but my skill with writing doesn’t translate over to other skills like drawing. You can be a master of one domain and an amateur in another.

With drawing, I have so many weaknesses. I can’t draw hands well, I can’t draw bodies well, my process of first sketch to final work doesn’t feel smooth.

This is where the kindergarten mindset comes in handy. As kids we play. We don’t get so wrapped up in making something perfect. In kindergarten we’re still at an age when we easily get completely focused on the moment—letting our activities absorb us.

Watch a child draw and they are telling a story, literally telling a story, often out loud as they draw. They are wrapped-up in their drawing, not because they are obsessed with making a technically correct work of art, but because they are enjoying what they are doing so much.

This ability to find joy in your work leads to success in any new endeavor. Kids don’t fail; they just experiment and play.

Embrace naivety. Delight in learning. Every time I draw I remind myself to approach it with this childish mindset. There is a clear difference between a mindset that keeps us in place versus one that encourages growth.

A Mindset for Growth

Carol Dweck is a researcher at Stanford University, and the author of, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. This book reveals the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset:

• Fixed mindset students believe that their abilities are already set. They think their intelligence and talents are predetermined. Their goal is to always look smart and never look foolish.
• Growth mindset students see their abilities as malleable, they can be developed through effort and work. They don’t necessarily believe everyone is the same, but they think anyone can get smarter or achieve better results if they put the work in.

This research changes they way we see learning and the path toward success. Your ability to grow depends on your belief that your abilities can, and should, be developed:

• Learning to draw is not a mystery; it requires learning visual concepts and dedicated practice.
• Learning to write well is a skill you can develop—one word, one sentence, one paragraph forward every day.
• Learning to market your business requires embracing trial and error, to learn from your mistakes, compile results, and form new strategies.

How you face roadblocks or learn anything new is more effective when you embrace a growth mindset. How you face challenges, the work you’re willing to do, and how you compare yourself to others either pushes you forward or holds you in place. Let’s look at this deeper:

1. Face Your Challenges

A fixed approach to a challenge is to avoid the risk of failing. A person with a fixed mindset stays away from challenges that may negatively impact their self-image. They would rather not try, then to try and fail. They will stick to what they know they perform well and steer clear of challenges outside that.

A big portion of my life could be defined as me avoiding challenges I wasn’t already good at, or that I felt were outside my comfort zone. What a waste. Over time, I’ve learn to dig in and embrace challenges.

A person with a growth mindset knows that: no matter the challenge, you can face it, learn from it, and improve. Also, you come out stronger on the other side. Each time I try to draw, I get better. Each failed business attempt is one more bit of experience I can put to use in the next project. Every challenge teaches you something new.

Each business challenge you face, you learn from—adding more skill and ability to your entrepreneurial repertoire.

2. Overcome Obstacles

You have some level of control over the challenges you face. You can choose to go to a new country, live there, and learn a new language. You can decide to launch a podcast or write an ebook. Obstacles, though, are outside your control. These are external forces that you have to deal with.

A person with a fixed mindset is blindsided by obstacles. If the problem lies outside their skills, they quickly try to avoid it, and let fear hold them back from facing it. Whereas, a person with a growth mindset looks at these external forces as opportunities to learn.

If you’re given a paper to write in school on a topic outside you’re area of expertise, or a report in the workplace, you’re not discouraged. Your self-image is not tied to the success of the project. If you put in effort and get mediocre results, you’re okay with it. Failure is just part of the process of learning.

If obstacles get in your path, if you have setbacks, with a growth mindset you’re determined to work through them—putting in the effort that is necessary.

3. Get Out What You Put In

The work you put in is the path to achievement. Someone with a fixed mindset doesn’t see it that way. They see effort as a sign of inability. They don’t see the path of learning as a tough road, with unpleasant hardships to work through, that pay dividends out on what you put in.

A person with a fixed mindset doesn’t handle criticism well. They quickly take criticism as a direct and personal insult, or they completely ignore it—not being able to deal with the affront. This leads to stagnation, by isolating yourself from external influences that could lead to positive change.

If you have a growth mindset, you’ll place criticism into a framework of learning. Negative feedback is filtered: any personal attacks, or negative feelings, are left to the side; while the substance of the criticism is analyzed.

This is a process your should cultivate: work on filtering and deconstructing criticism. Review feedback for knowledge that can propel your growth.

It can be tough to field any type of negative feedback, especially in a professional setting, where the stakes are high. It’s imperative to your entrepreneurial growth to handle criticism well.

Take a deep breath, let the negativity dissipate, and then mine the criticism for helpful information. Make it a part of your process.

5. Learn From Others

A person with a fixed mindset, not only doesn’t want to deal with criticism from others, they are also intimidated by the success of others. The success of someone else is a mirror they use to compare to themselves, and this reflection gives them a negative self image.

Instead, a person with a growth mindset sees someone else’s success as a source to learn from. It inspires them to push forward.

Cultivate and Accelerate Growth

A few months ago I participated in a Startup Weekend here in Orlando Florida. It’s technically a conference, but quite different in format. It isn’t just sitting and watching presentations, rather it’s focused on taking action.

At a Startup Weekend you become part of a team and literally work towards launching a business in a weekend. It’s a hectic and surefire way to push you out of your comfort zone. This quickly pinpoints where you are stagnating and will push you to make breakthrough. You succeed at this event by jumping into tasks (many well outside your core skill set): giving presentations, writing marketing copy, designing graphics, taking in-person person polls—learning through hands on techniques.

I found myself asking for permission to act early on at this event, left behind while those around me just jumped in, and tackled each new obstacle. I didn’t make progress at first, nor help my team by sitting on the sidelines. It wasn’t until I jumped in, self-directed, and started taking risks, that the spirit of the weekend started to make sense to me. I made lot’s of mistakes, but so did everyone on my team, we learned as we failed forward.

We had a real, tangible business, a truckload of promotion, and something to feel proud of by the end of the weekend. We got real audience feedback and made tremendous progress in a short period of time. It made me realize how much I could accomplish everyday, if I would just take this approach and apply it to my own work.

If you want to reach your creative business potential, then work on developing the traits of a person with a growth mindset. See challenges as opportunities, failure as fuel for growth, effort as necessary, criticism as as source of knowledge, and other people’s success as proof that you can be success too.

Jump in, experiment, make mistakes, and learn as you go.

Now is Your Time for Growth

Throughout our lives, we build up this identity of ourselves, and a big part of that identity are the things we are good at, those things we’ve accomplished—our successes. When you become a master of a domain it’s all too common for it to feel difficult to appear inexperienced in another.

You could have a growth mindset in one area of your creative business, while being quite fixed in another. For example, you might believe that you can readily continue to improve your creative skills, while feeling that components of your business skills are not attainable.

Try dissecting your attitude toward different areas of your creative business:

• Do you have a fixed or growth attitude to each important part of your business?
• How do you approach new challenges in your business?
• Do you readily embrace obstacles or does each setback push you further into a fixed position?
• Are there critical areas of your creative business that you’re avoiding?

Trying anything new, ensures failure, in fact it ensures multiple, repeated failures before breaking through. This can be difficult for one’s ego to take.

It requires a reframe of failure to take on a new endeavor. Success at anything is incremental. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process. Learning to embrace and enjoy the process is paramount to breaking through. So to is pushing yourself to take on new, uncomfortable challenges.

Your forward progress as an entrepreneur necessitates a growth mindset. Where are you fixed? Where are you stagnant? What can you do to shake that loose and set yourself up for growth?

Don’t let failure hold you back when learning new things:

• Alright, your cake didn’t turn out symmetrical, but it does in fact taste like cake and is edible.
• Your painting looks like a seven year old made it, but at least your learning how to mix colors and apply paint to canvas.
• Your marketing campaign got few click-throughs, but you have another strategy to try.

Embrace the process of failing forward, as that’s what learning is.

As you push yourself to break through more obstacles, especially those outside your comfort zone, you’ll create positive feedback loops. You’ll prove to yourself that you can learn diverse skills, overcome numerous obstacles, and this knowledge will encourage you to keep learning and continue moving forward.

Your Kindergarten Mind

We all have to start somewhere—and with new endeavors we all start at zero.

If you have a fixed mindset, then it’s a tough pace to be—one filled with fear and avoidance. But, if you embrace a growth mindset, then new challenges are wondrous—they feel like fascinating opportunities, filled with colorful potential, inside surprising worlds you’re excited to dig in and explore. They are fun, rather than fear inducing.

If you continually learn new things, life can be more like kindergarten, so to can your creative business endeavors. Shift into a kindergarten mindset. Embrace the adventure.

Learn, play, and grow everyday.

Graphic Credit: Hat designed by pixeline from the Noun Project.

With a blog, we are always writing and always publishing—pushing out a never-ending flow of content: blog articles, guest posts, ebooks, and more. We have big writing needs and this necessitates a system built to support those needs. Enter your reservoir of ideas.

A reservoir is a place where water collects. We take water out as needed and use it. Then, as it rains, water flows back into the reservoir—filling it back up. It’s a natural rhythm of endless movement.

This is exactly how an idea reservoir works. You continuously pour your best blog post ideas into it, as they occur to you, collecting them there to be worked on. Then, you take them out when needed, as you add more blog post ideas back in. It’s a constant, fluid writing system.

This is a key component of a professional blog writer’s workflow.

Don’t Let Your Best Ideas Escape Down the Drain

There’s only so much you can keep in your brain before your best ideas escape—spilling out of your mind and down the drain. You need somewhere to store your ideas safely, before they are lost.

An idea reservoir is a collection of your content ideas stored in an easy to access place.

You can use your favorite writing app, a spreadsheet, or even a paper notebook to write your ideas in. I prefer to move all my blog post ideas into one collection point in Evernote—making for a long list of ideas, with each individual idea easy to find, and develop further.

The main advantage of an idea reservoir is that you have all your best ideas in one safe place that you can work with as needed. There are four components to master working with your idea reservoir—how to:

1. Fill it with great ideas.
2. Pour in ideas of any length.
3. Filter your best ideas to the top.
4. Keep your ideas flowing.

By applying these strategies you’ll have an overflowing reservoir of blog post ideas that you can readily work with and tap into long term.

1. Filling Your Idea Reservoir

It’s important that you not only never run out of ideas, but that you always have an overloaded number of ideas to work with in your reservoir. If you’re new to this, don’t expect your reservoir to develop fully in a single day.

It can take some time to go from water drops to reservoir:

• At first your collection may start as a small bucket of water—just a handful of blog post ideas dripping in one at a time—and that’s fine to get started.
• Try spending an afternoon, or a few afternoons this week building that list. Grow it into a well of blog post ideas, one that’s quite sizable and deep.
• Continue to add blog post ideas in daily and in time this well will burst with hundreds of blog post ideas and become a thoroughly developed idea reservoir—one that will serve your blogging needs for the long term.

With a large number of blog post ideas to work with, one you’re constantly adding in new ideas to, you’ll never suffer from writer’s block again. You’ll always have another topic waiting to be written.

Here are a few suggestions for capturing your blog post ideas:

• Have a quick way to record your ideas when at your computer. I do this by always having Evernote running in the background, as well as plugged into my browser, so I can easily clip ideas, copy and paste a url, or capture ideas I have quickly.
• When you’re away from your computer, take best advantage of your paper capture system. Or, use your mobile phone or voice recorder to grab your thoughts. These tools are handy no matter where you are.

Having lots of relevant ideas is the key to keeping your reservoir full. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, then try these strategies:

• Reading – Books, magazines, blog posts, newsletters, and more. If you read an interesting idea, it tends to spark more ideas. If you find it relevant to your audience and blog, then take note of it. Of course movies, the radio, and really any type of art, news, or culture you consume can spark all sorts of interesting ideas. Follow your niche and also look for ideas outside your area of expertise.
• Audience – Poll your audience, answer their comments, chat with them on Twitter, hang out with them on Google+. Take note of the problems they are facing and the issues they need assistance with. What they care about will give you lots of highly-relevant ideas.
• Offsite – Hang out in forums and join communities online, answer the questions that come up there, those are great sparks to an idea for a blog post. Even a one or two sentence answer you give to a question can turn into a the spark that ignites a detailed article.
• Real Life – We get so absorbed with online activities as bloggers, not surprising as our sites live online, but our audience lives in real life. We live in real life. It informs us and shapes our experience. Take note of the important or funny things that happen to you—this is the unique material that matters and will make your blog posts stand out with compelling stories.

Make a habit of writing down your blog post ideas. Question the information you take in and experiences you have. What unique insight can you bring to each idea you come across?

Ideas come from all around us, but we shape them, give them context, and fill them with meaning. Your ideas and your opinions matter—capture them in your idea reservoir. Let’s look at exactly how to do that.

2. Pouring in Your Ideas

I use Evernote as my idea reservoir, but Microsoft OneNote or Google Docs can work fine as well. Use what works best for you, but do look at the features you need first.

It’s ideal to use an application that is available in the cloud, one that backs up automatically and sinks between your devices. This way your thoughts are always easy to access and are stored safely.

These apps are flexible enough to record your full thoughts in any individual entry, and you can take full advantage of that when needed, but don’t feel you need long entries to capture your initial ideas; short is fine. Most of my ideas start as minimal entries.

All you really need to capture is enough of the idea that you can come back to it at a later day and work with it.

Sometimes my entries in Evernote are as simple as a potential title and a few bullet points, like this:

“How to Write Powerful Headlines”

At other times, my Evernote entries are a few paragraphs or longer thoughts on a topic. I also write down outlines, when I quickly visualize the structure of a post. The more you write on a regular basis, the quicker you’ll think of an article structure and strategy early on.

Don’t worry too much about the form your initial ideas take. It’s much more important to just get your ideas into your reservoir and keep building your list.

If you’ve written ideas on scraps of paper or as voice memos, then add them to your reservoir as soon as possible. The simpler your system and the more direct from idea to placing in your reservoir, the more ideas you’ll capture safely. Also, you can place Evernote on your mobile phone to speed up your process—quickly capturing your ideas wherever you are.

After you get lots of ideas into your reservoir, you’ll need to prioritize them, so you can work with these ideas in your list effectively.

3. Filtering Your Ideas

If you’re filling your reservoir with lots and lots of ideas, then you can’t possibly write them all. This is an ideal situation—when your reservoir is well stocked with a large list of hundreds of ideas.

Unfortunately, some ideas you collect in your reservoir can sit for some time. That’s okay, some blog post ideas are great and others prove to be mediocre. It’s important to filter them.

Put the best ideas you have at the top of your list. These are the ones you want to make a priority to write on. By filtering your blog list, your best ideas are consistently written. You can prioritize the ideas in your reservoir by:

• Reader Impact – Place blog post ideas that feel like a high-impact hit with your audience high up on your list.
• High Energy – If you’re excited to write on a topic, it’s often best to tackle writing your blog post when you can capitalize on that enthusiasm.
• Timeliness – Give a higher priority to any post that’s covering a currently trending subject or news event. You want to catch the upswing and cover a topic when it matters most.
• Strategic Alignment – Ultimately, your blog posts ideas need to fit within the framework of your blogging strategy. Those that have the greatest fit for your current and long term goals should be given proper priority.

Filter your blog post ideas on a consistent basis, putting the best ones for your goals in position to be written next.

You can also cull your list periodically as needed. If you use a system like Evernote, then your mediocre ideas can always just sit at the bottom like sediment, with your best ideas flowing like water over the top.

But if you want to keep your list clear, then pull out the dirt on occasion. This can re-incentivize you to add more high quality ideas to your list. If you have a hundred ideas in your reservoir, but only twenty of them are good, then you really only have those twenty workable ideas to pull from.

Filtering helps keep your list of ideas properly prioritized, so you put your writing time into where it will make the most impact. But, many of the ideas in your reservoir are neither good, nor bad—at least at first. They are just in need of additional thought, work, and development. Once an idea enters you’re reservoir, you need to keep it moving forward.

4. Keeping Your Ideas Flowing

The ideas in your reservoir are constantly in motion. You can work with any individual idea at anytime in an application like Evernote. Just jump in and work on improving a single entry:

• Do some research and add a few paragraphs of notes.
• Plan the points you will make on this topic.
• Work on an outline or strategic structure.
• Develop that initial idea you had into the beginning of a robust article.

At any given time, you will have a number of brand new ideas in your reservoir, right next to a number of more developed ideas.

I have a Stack in Evernote called “Writing,” which serves as my reservoir. I pour all my initial ideas into a Notebook there called “Ideas”. I also work with my ideas further within that same Notebook, until they feel developed enough to pull out and turn into a complete draft.

Use this simple strategy to keep your idea reservoir moving: anytime you pull post ideas out of your system, add at least that many back in, if not more.

Some blog post ideas require longer development before they are best written on. These are the ideas you add to over time—bit-by-bit—more thoughts and information, slow cooking them until they are planned and ready to write your first draft.

Ideas flow through your reservoir fluidly—some travel quickly, while others take their time.

From Idea to Reservoir to Publication

The path that ideas take through your reservoir isn’t complicated. Let’s recap how an idea reservoir works (with an example):

1. Ideas are collected. Your ideas are collected in lists in your system. This is your idea reservoir—an archived list of blog post ideas. Example: You add a “time management” blog post idea as an entry into your reservoir in Evernote. It’s now safely stored and easily accessible.
2. Ideas are developed. You work with these ideas as needed—individually—move them up or down in importance as you develop them. Example: You work on your “time management” blog post idea when it fits your schedule, adding in research, ideas, work on an outline, and develop the post.
3. Ideas move toward publication. You pull these ideas out as you move from rough draft toward content that is ready to publish. Example: Pull out your “time management” blog post idea after it’s been mostly written, then polish it, and prep it for publication. You then make sure to add more ideas back into your reservoir; in this case, more “time management” related post ideas—so your reservoir is always filled to the brim.

Your idea reservoir should be an active stream of ideas in motion—with ideas entering, then growing, developing, and moving on toward publication.

What does your idea reservoir look like? Do you use Evernote or another solution to keep your growing list of blog post ideas? How do you capture ideas, develop them, and move them through your system toward publication?

Graphic Credit: Water designed by DEADTYPE from the Noun Project.

If you’re staring at a blank screen, and unsure of what to write next, then you have a problem. It’s a big one—writer’s block.

Honestly, I don’t believe in it as a black magic occurrence. There is no voodoo or bad mojo that’s got you unsure of what to write today. It’s just a straightforward result of a broken writing system. Fortunately, writer’s block is avoidable.

You need to arm yourself with a solid plan of what you are going to write before you start clacking on that keyboard. Focus your topic, hammer in on a hook, list your points, and construct a blueprint for the article you are about to build.

If you jump into your writing without a strategy formed, then you risk writing a meandering mess. You’ll may end up spending valuable time rewriting, editing, and reworking that stew. Outlines quickly pull your ideas together. They save you time and allow you to target your writing results. With an outline in hand, you’ll reliably draft a quality, well thought out blog post.

In this article, we review the pros and cons of outlining, before walking through each component of creating a formidable outline, then provide you with a real outline example you can deconstruct, and leave you with all the tools you’ll need to craft compelling blog post outlines—adding this ammunition to your blog writing system.

First let’s look at skipping outlines altogether.

Why do people write without outlines?

Who are these non-outlining neanderthals? Well I’m one of them on occasion. While I outline most of my blog posts, I don’t outline all of them. Every strategy has it’s merits and drawbacks.

Reasons to write without a solid outline:

• It’s simple. If you have a simple idea for a post, it may not demand outlining, planning, and development. You may simply have some quick news to share or a question you want to pose to your audience.
• It’s quick. When you have an idea burning in your brain, you just need to write it down. There is a certain energy with jumping straight into writing when you have a powerful idea. Immediacy is attractive. If I have an idea burning like this, I open up my journal and capture it there.
• It’s formed. There are times that you just have a plan worked out in your mind, without formally writing it down. This is like a mental outline. But be careful here, as this is often a recipe for loosing a thread, as you try to work it out too much in your head, rather than getting those main points written down as you go through the process of developing an idea.

There are serious, potential drawbacks to not outlining, but you can use good judgement. Determine when jumping into writing without an outline is worth the risk of having to spend time editing issues out later.

Outlining is a writing process that works, it’s reliable, whereas your ability to kick out stream of consciousness gold is not something you can rely on day in and day out.

Benefits of Outlining Your Blog Posts

Professional bloggers outline most of their posts. It’s one of the writing systems they rely on to churn out quality articles, reliably, and at a fast rate.

There are a few compelling reasons to outline your blog posts:

• Saves you time. Outlines are a quick way to pinpoint the main points you’ll make in an article and form a top level strategy. If you start with a solid plan, you’ll write with clarity, which will save you editing and rewriting time compared to a disorganized approach.
• Eliminate writer’s block. An outline is literally a plan of what you will write. With this in hand, there is no struggle for ideas. The big ideas are already there, broken down into manageable chunks to tackle. It helps smooth the process of getting relevant words flowing.
• Think it through. Well thought out posts are more powerful. They counter the counterpoints, have a logical flow to their narrative, and make meaningful connections. As you develop your outline, you think through how your post will piece together into a cohesive argument. You look closely at the information you need to research and plan the points your post will focus on.

Learning how to write a blog post outline is a skill worth putting time into mastering.

How to Create a Formidable Outline

Outlining is a fairly simple process. Of course, the more complex the subject and the longer the piece, the more you’ll need to develop your outline. Let’s leave aside planning series, ebooks, or courses for now, and just focus on how to outline a blog post article.

1. Choose a Topic

What topic will you write about?

Ideally, you know your blog audience well. You have a vivid understanding of the problems they face and are armed with ideas about how to solve those problems. If you capture your ideas in a master list, then you have a well of topics to choose from.

Pick a topic that feels compelling to you, that you know will resonate with your audience, and that you are excited to write about.

Write the topic down, break the perfect white of the page, and get some text moving.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

The audience you’re writing to will make a tremendous difference in the approach you take to your blog post. Who is your reader? Who are you writing this specific blog post for?

Identify the target audience for this article with as much specificity as possible. They are the focus of the topic you’ll write this blog post on. Literally write down who they are, as they may be a segment of your overall blog audience.

3. Ask a Question

Take this general topic and turn it into a question. Your blog post will answer this query. Get your brain working: your mind will engage with this conundrum, your creativity will kick in, and you’ll start turning solutions to the problem over in your mind.

Write down the problem—summarizing it; then write down the solution with your target reader in mind. This is the focus of your article.

4. Write a Hook

Now pull that topic like taffy, stretch it, and look for unique angles into it. Consider where the energy is. Look for the most compelling aspect of this problem. Find a unique perspective that feels gripping. Hone in on this one clear message that you want to convey to your readers. Now use this as the starting point for your blog article to craft a powerful introduction.

Hooks are what you put on your fishing line, the wiry barb that will sink into your reader’s mouth. Consider how you can surprise, interest, and grab the attention of your reader, then drive them to read deeper into your blog post.

It could be a compelling story, a shocking statistic, or another opening copywriting technique that pulls at the mind and emotions of your audience.

5. Create a Headline

A headline takes your topic, the meaningful message you are focusing on, and concentrates it. This title turns your ideas from excited atoms into a laser focused beam.

They have to stand out in search engines and compete for clicks in feed readers. They must grab attention and pull a reader into your post.

Focus your topic and turn your hook into a bold headline. Make your title a compelling point of entry for your readers. Imagine your title on the cover of a magazine. What would make the reader pick up that magazine, and jump from the cover into that article?

I often write down multiple options for my blog post titles. Sometimes the perfect headline comes early in the process, at other times it requires exploring many options until arriving at just the right one.

Your title is the most important line you’ll write for your blog post; spend the time needed to nail it.

6. List Your Main Points

The more you write, the more you’ll get a sense of various article structures. This will inform the number of points and structure of your outline. With format in mind, write down your initial ideas.

At first just get these out. They may be a list of possible points to make in the article. If you’re writing a basic opinion-based blog post, then making three relevant points may be all that’s needed.

List each section you’ll cover, write the heading titles for each section, and describe the main points and important sub-points you’ll make in each section. This will form the meat of your blog post.

7. Craft Your Conclusion

Your conclusion is as important as your hook. This is where you tie together the threads of your article’s argument and inspire your reader to take action.

There are many ways to conclude a post, but the tactic I often take is to focus on inspiring the reader to put to use what they’ve learned in the post. Often this also involves encouraging them to leave results or interact with your post in some meaningful way as well.

If a reader walks away with a strong motivation to put to use what you’ve just taught, then your conclusion is on target—even better, they take immediate action.

8. Jot Down Notes, Resources, and Refine Your Outline

Develop your thoughts. Take your list of ideas and place them in a logical order that will flow well in your post.

Make note of any counter arguments that you should consider or any background information you should cover. Brainstorm ideas that might strengthen your argument or read with greater resonance. Consider questions your audience might have.

Jot down any additional areas you may need to research, such as: reference additional resources, pull together third-party data, gather interesting visuals, quote a professional, or interview an expert.

Keep in mind outlining is the preparation phase for writing your blog post, so if you’re going to do keyword research for this article, then add that information to your post plan as well. Capture all of it in a document and get it ready to write.

9. If Needed, Rework Your Outline

Keep in mind, much of this is a fluid process.

You may find yourself listing points well before developing a hook, or a remarkable headline may be the first thing that jumps out at you when you start considering the topic. It really doesn’t matter the order here; just jump in. Make notes, work on forming the plan for your article, and allow for it to develop.

You may find that some points are off as your overall plan comes into focus. Shape it as you polish your thoughts. Rework your outline as needed until it feels sharp.

Outline Format

It’s all well and good to explain the strategy of how to write an article outline, but a real example will give you a better feel for how to put theory into action.

Here’s the format I use for article outlines:

• Title
• Target Audience
• Problem
• Solution
• Hook
• List of Main Points
• Conclusion
• Resources (Optional)
• Keyword Research (Optional)
• Notes (Optional)

Here is an example of how I outlined a blog post about how I escaped the cubicle and started working online:

Title: “Top 5 Reasons to Quit the Cubicle and Work from the Beach”

Target Audience: Those considering leaving their job and are dreaming of starting an online business.

Problem: Wage slavery is not fun. Working a job you don’t love, or even enjoy, is soul crushing. It’s difficult to plan a pathway out of it. And scary to consider a clean break or drop in income.

Solution: Quit your job, work online, and build a business around your passion. Design a job you enjoy that fits the lifestyle you want.

Hook: Tap into the fear of being trapped in a dead end job. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that way. Give real examples of shitty jobs I’ve had and then lead the reader out. Open up the idea of another path—one sunny and waiting to be discovered if they escape the cubicle. It offers greater freedom and opportunity for them in the long term.

Main Points:

Conclusion: Pull the literal story of moving to a South American beach to start an online business into a metaphor for working from anywhere. Ask the reader where their beach is? It may just be a cabin deep in the woods or a condo in downtown Tokyo. Really, it’s their ideal lifestyle and business, crafted to meet their needs. Reach out to the reader to get them to share their story of getting started down this path.

In addition to the outline above, I placed a few notes as well into the article plan, but I didn’t have outside resources or do any keyword research for this particular post. Every article is unique and the level of pre-planning will vary.

Few outlines come out perfectly. They are often more of a rough draft plan. You may discover a more interesting path to pursue than your original plan once you get into it. Even blueprints get revised throughout the course of constructing a building.

Writing is a fluid process, but an outline gives you a solid point to start working from.

Outlining in Advance

Outlining is a basic process of planning any content you are creating. Whether you are planning the audio to a video course you’re about to shoot, or looking to write your next ebook, an outline will help you.

Outlining is a skill that will improve your writing results. It gives you a clear plan of attack. With outline in hand, you’re ready to jump into creative flow and write your first draft.

Or hold onto that outline and tackle the first draft anytime. Outlining the ideas you have, arms you with a stockpile of article ammunition.

By outlining and planning blog posts well in advance, it develops your ideas into a ready to write resource. It allows you the time you need to improve your post ideas, as you come across new information. It gives you the space to think through details and develop clarity.

Taking your reservoir of writing ideas, formatting them into well-planned outlines, gives you a tappable resource that will have you—unblocked—and writing powerful content on a regular basis.

Graphic Credit: Band Aid designed by Rémy Médard from the Noun Project.

Electricity shocks, sparks, buzzes and crackles. So to does electric content. It grabs your attention, holds it, and runs a charge through you. It makes you tingle.

If you want to grow your tribe, build your group of true fans and connect with them on a meaningful level, then tap into the electricity we share. Find that energy; it’s everywhere—in me and in you.

Look at the broad currents—the grid that the electric travels on, across trends and through desires. Watch all these sparks move, gather, and collect. Put your hand on the wire of conception and interest—feel it vibrate.

Let it propel your creative output, pushing your best ideas forward, while completing a circuit that connects your audience to your message.

Let’s look at how.

Color the Electric as Bright Cerulean Blue

We have hidden uniqueness—waiting to be discovered. The electric is in us.

There is untapped electricity inside you. You can tap into it. Plug a wire into your heart and let the current out. Share it.

You have knowledge that if released would change lives. Those crazy life experiences, that time you almost died haphazardly, that project you lost weeks of sleep over, there are people that would benefit from those stories.

Where is the electric in you? What memories trigger when you wake up in the middle of the night? What passions are so strong that you are obsessed with them; you can’t not do them? What drives you? You can electrify your content by tapping into the energy inside you.

It isn’t enough to make useful content, not if it’s boring. It’s not enough to create unimaginative, ineffective, mediocre solutions. Or do what everyone else is doing—emulating them ad nauseam. Trying to break into a niche without innovation, it’s like trying to tap into the dead wires of an old house.

Instead, you need your own brand of juice. Your own crackling blue energy, and not just blue, but bright cerulean blue—your blue.

Journal daily, experiment whimsically, and produce wildly to pull on the threads within you. Search until you find that authentic core deep inside you, then dig deeper. There is energy there.

Speak with your voice. Write with your hands. Produce with your process. Create with your mind. Color ideas with what is undeniably you. Your life, your experiences, your ideas, they matter. They make a difference.

They connect the real you with the electric.

Touch the Electric

Electricity is a charge that runs through us. It beats in our hearts and travels through our veins. It fires the synapse of our brains, lighting up the wires that make us think, compelling us to action—releasing energy upon the world.

Any interest we have, any passion, any craving, is shared. Someone else has a similar interest and a desire to connect. There is energy in every connection.

These connections form into electric pathways between us. Your website is part of this grid. The content that you create are the wires that connect you to your audience.

We can touch the electricity of a trend. A new Apple product comes out, it’s sparkling with so much vibrancy. There is energy in everything that is successful. When a TED speaker delivers their presentation something inside you unlocks with the buzz of inspiration.

There are sparks of potential leaping form anything that is commanding attention or gaining momentum. If people care about something, if they have a passion for it, there is overflowing electricity there.

You can feel this energy.

Notice it travel along the wire. Look for those connection points where multiple wires meet—the overlap of numerous groups, ideas, and fusing interests—where the electric gathers. That’s where new opportunities are found.

Plug into those wall sockets, and where none exist, build them.

Reach out, touch this electricity, find that point where trending currents, your passions, and opportunity meet. This is where electric content comes alive. This is the point to create from.

Electric in Me, Electric in You

There is electricity in me. There is electricity in you. There are real connections between us.

We want to reach out and authentically connect. It’s how we relate to people. We find out what their interests are, what they spend their energy on, and look for overlap with what we focus our energy on. That’s where sparks form.

To build an audience, we take this connection a level deeper. We learn all about the problems our tribe has—every nuance. We find out what matters most to them. Their needs cry out into the electric.

Discover what your audience’s problems are and hone in on them; solve them. Understand their desires and speak to them. Learn their language—the terms and phrases that ring with authenticity in their ears. Listen for the electric.

If you want to grow your audience, form meaningful relationships, then work with these currents; let them run through you. Keep lists of problems that your group has. Research and provide deep resources that assist them.

With this knowledge in hand, you can amplify the solutions your provide—electrifying your content.

Turn Up the Voltage

Create content that is insanely useful, that is a game changer for your tribe’s business and life. Connect your audience with the electric.

Make sure you’re tuned into the currents. Find it and then turn up the voltage:

• Don’t just write write seven tips, instead make it 107.
• Break news, instead of covering a well established topic.
• Tell a story about when you utterly failed, hit rock bottom, and lost everything; instead of telling a story about just stumbling.
• Make a video, and not just any video, but you in underpants interviewing an expert.

Know where the energy is. Tap into it and amp it up. Write content that:

• Solves a real problem, one that your audience is struggling with today.
• Makes people think and inspires them to take action.
• Solidly and undeniably is produced from a source of truth inside you.
• Explains how to do something important to your audience, with every step grounded in real examples.
• Gives away all your secrets as you learn them, and does so generously, with meaningful detail explained.
• Packs in analysis, research, and quotes from experts—giving it greater context, relevance, and authority.

Create content that makes an impact; that electrifies your audience. Help them, change their lives, and make a meaningful, lasting difference. Plug into this energy, let it stimulate you, and lead by connecting.

Take your ideas and amp them up. Blow people away with your humor. Fill your blog with language that inspires. Pack your content with creative insight that could only come from you. Electrify the topics you cover. Supercharge the solutions you provide. Speak with sparks, write with energy, and create with the power inside you.

Write electric content and people will share it. Let your energy light the path. Your viewpoint, your ability to tap into the electric, let it power your way.

A big thanks to Corbett Barr for inspiring the sentiment in this post (read: “Write Epic Shit”).

Graphic Credit: Electricity designed by Ryan Oksenhorn from the Noun Project.