1. I have ideas. Really good ideas. Ideas that are so good that they can characterize me as a person. Everyone else? Eh, not so good at ideas.
2. Ideas > Actions. 
3. I don’t do stuff. I think stuff. Other people can do while I sit here and think. Pass me the butter.

But really:

1. Everyone has ideas. Everyone has really good ideas. But ideas — good ideas — are incredibly common and cheap. 
2. Taking something from your head (or from an idea person’s brilliant mouth) and making it a reality — that’s the commodity. 
3. It’s the doing that requires the actual work. In doing, you realize the things you couldn’t see from up high: the problems, the inconsistencies, how the implemented idea fits in with everything else. How you deal with those challenges determines whether the idea actualizes or not. This is where skill and experience — not a random firing of neurons — come into play.

So, if you’re calling yourself an ‘idea person,’ stop for a second. Ask yourself:

1. Are my ideas really that much better than everyone else’s? (Probably not.)
2. Are my ideas really more valuable than the skills necessary to make the idea come to fruition? (Definitely not.)
3. Am I being self-important, lazy, or both? (Probably.)

I pursue my long term goals using a set of what I call “productivity journals.” (As featured in my book, Long Term Person, Short Term World.)

Productivity journals are of two types: short term journals (STJs) and long term journals (LTJs.) STJs are maintained on a monthly basis. LTJs are maintained for 5 years.

These periods of time are long enough to get you outside of a short term frame of mind, and short enough to make reasonably reliable long term decisions. (These time-frames can easily be customized. The important part is that one journal is long term and the other is shorter term.)

The LTJ serves as your “base” and is revisited regularly to ensure your short term is aligned with your long term principles and goals.

The STJ is used day-to-day to devise your weekly and monthly plans of attack and to track your short term progress. By recording your progress along the way, you will be able to make calculated adjustments, allowing yourself to more effectively pursue your long term goals.

Together the LTJ and STJ are a powerful, synergistic combination: LTJs allow for a top-down approach to goal achievement. STJs are bottom-up, providing an “on-the-ground” perspective that a top-down approach cannot see, and allowing for the flexibility that a top-down approach cannot foresee.

If you design your STJ based on your LTJ, and if our LTJ evolves based on the STJ, then the journals serve as a two-way bridge between our short and long term selves.

Purpose

I created this system for two reasons:

1. I struggled with task, time, and goal management. Waves of productivity followed by still puddle water, again and again.
2. I had a bad habit of switching from one flavor-of-the-month system to another before switching again — the grass is indeed always greener. I spent far too much time getting ready to get things done instead ofactually getting things done.

The system addresses these two problems by allowing me to:

1. Manage my tasks, time, and goals on a consistent, long term, and realisticbasis.
2. Be both creative and analytical in my pursuit of productivity. If it’s easy, flexible, and (sorta) fun, it won’t produce friction — I’ll use it, reliably.

And I do.

What differentiates this from other systems?

There are two important differences between this system and other journal-based productivity systems.

1. Tasks unrelated to your most important goals are nowhere near these journals. Productivity journals are sacred. In them, you will uncover amazing, actionable truths about yourself — this won’t happen if “buy toilet paper” is a few lines up.
2. Daily, (relatively) freeform journaling is a critical component of STJs — in fact, most of the pages are dedicated to this habit. It is the cornerstone habit upon which your productivity — task, time, and goal management — is built.

What’s so great about journaling?

Journaling, whether by the method described here or otherwise, has enormous benefits. Equally important, journaling is easy, which means it’s an easy habit to start and stick with. You literally just move your hand around a page or type into your computer. It almost doesn’t even matter what you write or type — it’s just the act that matters.

Perhaps the greatest benefit is journaling ability to help us understand ourmental models and improve our emotional intelligence (EI).The interference of mental models and low EI are the greatest impediments to personal productivity and sound goal management.

Mental models are subconscious thoughts and beliefs that inform how we view the world and how we choose to act within it. They’re invisible, silent angels and devils on our shoulders.

Journaling is among the best ways to examine ourselves on a deeper level and discern the models by which we live.

Emotional intelligence is our ability to recognize emotion in ourselves and others, and use this information effectively.

In walks journaling. By recording events and thoughts, we can learn how to improve both self- and social awareness, and we can better manage our behavior.

In short, journaling makes us more effective and more authentic versions of ourselves.

Tools

When setting up this system, the gatekeeper decision is whether to go digital with a word processor or journal app, or analog with paper and pencil. Both would work fine. Here, I describe my preference (analog), but all of this applies equally.

I use Moleskine’s large Cahier journals for both my monthly STJ and my 5-year LTJ:

They’re cheap (about $3 each.) They have exactly 80 pages which is perfect for my purposes. It is just about the most pages I’d ever need for an STJ and short enough that I am not tempted to overwrite and overanalyze in the LTJ.

Perfect for succinct writing in the LTJ and detailed, comprehensive writing in the STJ.

So, yeah, I’m a big fan of these journals. But there are plenty of other journals and notebooks that work just as well — longer, shorter, hardcover, blank, gridded, etc., etc.

My journals do not travel far without two things:

A key component of my system are David Seah’s Emergent Task Planner stickypads.

And a pencil. Specifically, this pencil, because no other pencil should exist.

Setup

Below, I describe my STJ and LTJ setup. This will give you a decent idea about how to set up your own. If you are interested in more detailed explanations, you can check out my book or website, sign-up for a free e-mail course, or Tweet/DM me @mjmottajr.

I organize both journals so they function front — to — back for one purpose and back — to — front for another. This prevents needless flipping-through to find the right page.

Setting Up Long Term Journal

Inside Cover: The inside cover of the LTJ serves two purposes. The top-half describes a few principles that guide my choice of goals and motivate my actions. I won’t spend time walking you through how you determine your life’s principles — but if you distill your goals down to their core, I think you’re off to a good start. (I recommend this book for that purpose.)

The bottom-half lists the goals that have been achieved since the LTJ was created. (Make sure to leave enough room here — you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish once you put your aspirations to paper.)

Monthly Pages: Working front-to-back, the first 60 pages of the LTJ are reserved for the 60 months in the next 5 years of your life. (It’s scary, but also exciting.)

Each monthly page has three sections: The first few lines describe the guideposts for the month, preferably written after reviewing the previous month.

The middle-third of each monthly page is for a review, written at the end of the month. How did it go? Where did I succeed and fail? What affected my results? (Here, pay particular attention to your resources.)

The bottom-third is for adjustments and thoughts for the following month. What did I learn? What should I modify going forward? (Here, too, think of your resources, and how they can be better allocated.)

Goal Pages: The next 20 pages are for selected goals. By “selected,” I mean goals that I have chosen to be part of my day-to-day now, or in the near future, not those I’m planning on doing sometime amorphous down the road. (I put these on post-its I keep in the LTJ until they’re ready for their own page. Also, not every goal in your queue gets promoted — some become less important as time goes on.)

Working back to front, I give selected goals a page. On the first few lines, I give the goal a name and describe it using the SMARTEST method . Then, on the lines below, indented and double-spaced, are short descriptions of the most important actions necessary for achieving the goal and associated guideposts. (Not all goals use up the whole page, but I like to give each a fresh page.)

Setting Up Short Term Journal

Daily Journaling: The first 60 pages are dedicated to daily journaling, although pages do not correspond to particular days as you may write more or less on any given day.

My journal has a few guidelines but no hard-and-fast rules. (Remember: Structured yet flexible.)

I skip lines between entries, date- and time-stamp them, and try to write for more than a page. Sometimes I go over, sometimes I manage only a few lines.

Most entries begin with a recitation of something that happened or something that’s coming up. Sometimes it’s something that is heavy on my mind, other times it’s “I just woke up. The coffee is good.”

More often than I’d like to admit, those are the most intelligible sentences I write.

But I know that far more important than intelligibility, is keeping the habit, even if I just write “Today was good” or “I’m writing this to keep the habit” (which I wrote on June 10, 2016, because I was both busy and uninspired.)

I have themes based on the day of the week, but they primarily serve as a back-up if I can’t think of anything to write day-of. (You can read about my themes here .)

Latter Pages: The latter 20 pages of my STJ serve the following purposes (listed in order back — to — front):

• Monthly guideposts (“mini” goals, described in greater detail in my book, drawn from the LTJ at the beginning of every month) (1 pg.)

• Weekly guideposts (informed by the monthly guideposts.) The bottom lines are for results and adjustments going forward.

• Dedicated pages for goals and practices

I use 2 pages for each of the following: tasks in pursuit of long term goals, and important habits I try to maintain such as exercise and meditation. Here, I’m tracking my overall progress and assessing the correlation between my intentions (“Run 2 miles”) and the actual reality (“Ran 1 mile.”)

By comparing intentions to realities, and by investigating the context, you unite two versions of yourself: the person you thought you would be and the person you actually were. When they meet, a lot can be learned.

Down the left side of the left page is the day or date followed by the intention and the reality. On the right page are comments and thoughts regarding the “meeting of minds” between the two versions of ourself.

As you can see below, I keep things simple, preferring a simple tracking system rather than an elaborate spreadsheet or such. Here’s how I keep track:

• a checkmark if I met my intention;
• an exclamation point if I exceeded it;
• a tilde if I did something, but not to the extent intended;
• an ugly X if I did nothing; or
• a dash if there was no intention (e.g., the weekend or family plans.)

Daily Logs

Continuing to move back-to-front is a section for logging throughout the day. I have found this very effective in keeping me on track, making sure I stay “ pareto ” and giving me insights as to how to up my game. I am not super-strict about it, but I try to:

• date the top of a page;
• write down the current time on the left;
• in the next column, the general project I am about to begin working on
• in the next, a short description of what specifically I intend on doing (“edit ch. 2”);
• progress notes

The far right column I reserve for short insights and notes that will help me during my weekly or monthly review.

This serves at least five functions:

Accountability: “10:24 AM — Feel tired but gonna try” takes less than ten seconds to write, but for whatever reason, it holds your feet to the fire.

Breadcrumbs: If you are anything like me, you will not remember where you left off unless the notes are detailed.

Timing: Humans are notoriously bad at estimating how long a task will take. The proof, as always, is in the pudding.

Reviewing: A log is a great reminder of how your day-to-day went. There is much insight to be gleaned from these records, insight that would be otherwise unavailable.

Transitioning: A log is also very helpful when one month (and STJ) has ended, and another is about to begin. You can see where you left off on each particular project, and transfer the information over all at once.

To-do lists

The beauty of the Emergent Task Planner (or ETP) is that it allows you to make a to-do list (on the right side) and plan out when you’re going to knock out those tasks (on the left side.) And, because this forces you to consider how long a particular task will take, you’ll be able to swap things around if need be.

The beauty of the stickypad version of the ETP is that you can stick the list right in your journal. I like to put it across from my log for ease of reference.

Long and the Short of It

You do not need to wait for the new year or the beginning of a new month to begin a project such as this. There is nothing magical about either of these events. You have as much right to define periods of time as society does, or even as the moon does.

Begin today or tomorrow if you can; pick another day if you must.

What better time than now? What better place than here?

Again, I highly recommend Moleskine’s large Cahier journals for both your LTJ and STJs, as well as the Emergent Task Planner stickypads. (Oh, and this pencil, of course.)

There are near-infinite combinations of tools that can make productivity journals. Find what works for you.

This is partly excerpted from Long Term Person, Short Term World. 

Well, sort of.

Although I’ve journaled “for 5 years,” I only journaled in 35 of those 60 months.*

Although I’ve journaled for 35 months, I only journaled in 91 of those 140 weeks.*

Although I’ve journaled for 140 weeks, I only journaled on 750 of those 980 days.*

In sum: Although I journaled for 5 years, I only journaled on 41% of those days.*

The above probably doesn’t fit your definition of “consistent.”

However:

More important than consistency is the willingness to return to a practice after an absence. Grit.

Consistency is both necessary and sufficient for forming a habit; however, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for keeping a habit.

When you miss doing Habit X for a day, week, month, or even a year, the Resistance emerges and says something like:

”It’s all ruined now! Might as well accept defeat.”

That’s why one day turns into two days, one week into two, one month to two; it’s why so many habits are start-stop, start-stop for our entire lives.

But if you accept that you’ll drop the ball and neglect habits, and if you expect that the Resistance will seize the opportunity to deflate our ambitions, you’ll be prepared to soldier on anyways.

Don’t let the Resistance convince you that you’ve lost the war when you’ve only lost one measly battle.

*Estimated numbers because I am a qualitative, not a quantitative, reviewer.

You can learn more about keeping habits in my book and on my blog.

Saving time! Efficiency!

But all it did was give me a ready-made, right-there, on-demand, how-can-I-possibly-ignore-this sandwich right there next to the Brita pitcher… all morning.

The sandwich made it until about 10. Because double digits or something — close enough to lunch, right?

No, not really.

Come 12, I made another sandwich. 

Takeaway

Efficiency, for its own sake, isn’t enough.

(NOTE: My book, Long Term Person, Short Term World, is $1 for the next few weeks and free on Thursday, August 3 and Friday, August 4. If you already own it or have already read it, would you mind encouraging others to check it out? Thank you!)

Basic Premise

According to most, “accomplishment” of a goal is:

Person sought X.

Person did Y.

Person got X because of doing Y.

This conception ignores the role of other people and circumstances that we have little, if any, control over. As a result of this widespread misbelief, society judges our actions by the outcome.

This is wrong. Here’s why:

1. Our lives are governed by uncertainty — and there’s little we can do about it. We like to pretend otherwise — it makes us feel safer.
2. We commit errors of logic by presuming that getting X means Y was effective, and conversely, that not getting X means Y was ineffective.

According to Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, there are three types of “things” in this world:

• those entirely in our control (the few);
• those outside our control (the many); and
• those we have some control over (where the important action is.)

Applied to Goals

It does us no good to define goals that can only be accomplished if other people and events happen to go our way. Instead, define your goals based on what you have at least some control over.

For example, consider the goal of “winning a poker tournament.” Poker, like life and everything in it, is affected by other people’s actions and general uncertainty. You may or may not get the cards you need; you have little control over other players’ actions, etc. You could play the best poker of your life and still lose the tournament — it happens to poker professionals all the time.

If, instead, you turn this goal into “play the best poker of my life in the tournament,” then this goal can be accomplished. It is entirely within your control.

Other Examples

• “Be a professional writer” requires other people to buy your book. “Self — publish a book”, however, is almost entirely within your control.
• “Get a promotion” depends upon your supervisors, company profits, office politics, bias, etc. “Make 1,000 sales calls”, on the other hand, is a goal because it is in your control. It puts you in position to receive a promotion, but the goal is achieved whether you receive the promotion or not.

Takeaway

Define your goals so you — and no one else — is in the driver’s seat. Then you can learn from your actions, not your outcomes.

***

For more on Epictetus and goal management, check out my book.

Then there’s the opposite problem: words that carry too much weight, leaving no room for context.

“What do you do?” is such a question.

When this question is asked, the questioner is specifically asking:

1. How do you earn money? 

(Or, if you don’t earn money because you’re raising a child, how your spouse earns money, or, if you’re unemployed, how you want to earn money.)

2. What life decisions have you made? 

(Not just your current title and current company, but your occupation generally. Certainly this says something about you!)

3. Where are you going next? 

(Because jobs are seen as mere steps on a ladder, and presumably you want to keep climbing, right?)

4. How do you compare to me? 

(Because now that person has created a situation where it’s awkward if you then don’t ask “What do you do?” too.)

5. What should we talk about next? 

(Rarely is “What do you do?” the end of a conversation. The question was asked in order to find a way to keep the conversation going. Perhaps the noblest of the reasons.)

I’m 34 years old, and until very recently, I had to either answer “I’m in school” or “I’m trying to…”

Now I can say, “I’m a professor.”

Of course, I much prefer saying the latter — you know, being an actual noun.

But in none of these cases was my answer, in any way, reflective of what I “do.”

Because I don’t do one thing. I do lots of things. And we all do lots of things. We’re more than our jobs, more than how we earn money. (In fact, I would argue that if we’re just “doing” one thing, we’re suppressing our aspirations, missing the chance to turn them into actually-achievable goals.

Prior to college, I decided that I liked Teaching and Mentoring, so I’d be an elementary school teacher.

Then I decided that, because I also liked Writing, I’d be a high school English teacher.

Then 9/11 happened and I decided that, because I liked Writing and (now) Politics, I’d write speeches for political candidates.

Then a family member went to prison and I became interested in the Law. And because I still liked Writing and Politics, I’d become a lawyer and maybe, someday, a politician. (Makes me cringe now.)

In law school, I decided that, because I still liked Mentoring and Teaching, I’d tutor the Law School Admissions Test and the Bar Exam.

After law school, because I realized that I liked Research — and that I liked Politics, Writing, Teaching, and Mentoring more than practicing the Law — I decided to become a professor of public policy.

Although I’ve chosen my profession, and although my answer to the “What do you do?” question will be the same for the foreseeable future, under the surface, I’m always changing.

So I’m always listening.

When I’ve barely made a dent in my day’s to-do list, when I know I’m going to miss my weekly or monthly guideposts, I usually have a moment where I think something like:

Should I start fresh tomorrow/next week/next month?

This is followed by a thought like:

No, I should finish strong. Suit up!

Then these two voices go to battle, blow for blow, parry for thrust.

It is easy (and tempting) to say that the first voice is the Resistance and the second is the voice of my inner grit, and thus I should do my best to finish strong.

I’m not sure it is as simple as that. I think, instead, that it is more accurate to say it depends.

There are, after all, benefits to starting fresh:

• Immediate relief;
• Self-forgiveness is an asset;
• We sometimes need to rethink the bigger picture, and time away is the only way to do this;
• Conserves energy and other resources for the next battle;
• And sometimes we just need a break.

So… How do we know when we should finish strong or start fresh?

I don’t know.

Or, rather, it depends.

The only way we know which makes more sense is if we can dig deep.

And the only way to dig deep is to write and explore our own thoughts, and then compare our experiences across time. Then we can begin to see patterns.

And then we can decide whether to finish strong or start fresh.

So I started flipping through old journals. (Made easier because we’re in the midst of a move to New York City and they were stacked in a box in my office.)

I came across one from about two years ago, written right after my fifteen minutes of fame on Twitter.

Here’s the story, briefly: Tim Ferriss posted a really personal story involving suicide. After telling the story, Ferriss presented an argument about why people should not commit suicide. One of Ferriss’s several points is that a person who commits suicide might cause more sadness among friends and family than he or she experienced themselves.

Brian Cuban, Mark Cuban’s lesser-known brother, took issue with the word might, arguing that this suggested that it might not, which in turn means that suicide is an OK option. Cuban and Ferriss then got in a Twitter battle, each side joined by their followers.

I Tweeted something about words being imperfect, and how meaning cannot be derived without the context of other words. By focusing narrowly on might, Cuban was missing the point. Worse, he was extrapolating to argue that Ferriss was arguing that suicide was OK — which was the complete opposite of his actual argument.

Ferriss quoted me as his closing argument and ended the battle.

Mic. drop.

Reading my journal entry, I sensed some vanity. I was on a dopamine high because I’d earned the (brief) respect of the famous Tim Ferriss, a bunch of new Twitter followers and blog readers. And I was absolutely damning of Cuban’s comments: condescending, almost to the point of vindictiveness.

This was disappointing to me. I’d like to think that the Michael Motta of T0day wouldn’t have gloated so much, or been so quick to shit on Cuban. (Or even taken the time to get involved in an ultimately meaningless Twitter debate.)

But the truth is, I’m not sure how I’d react today. I’m subject to the same condition as Brian Cuban and Tim Ferriss: mental models. Ferriss saw one thing. Cuban another. And me a third. We’re all just responding to the world we see, not the world of others, not the world we share.

(This method applies equally well to any to-do list — it can be written on something pre-made like ETP or to scrap paper towels — it doesn’t matter.)

This is how I use the ETP (which is only slightly different than the creator intended, so David Seah deserves much credit for my workflow):

1.) I date the top-right.

2.) Moving down, I list the three most important tasks for the day, usually related to my three current long term goals.

For me, the first task is usually “Journal” since it’s my foundational habit followed by “Write X” (because that’s what I am), followed by either running or yoga (because if I don’t make exercise one of my day’s Big 3, I won’t do it.)

Of course, your Big 3 will probably be different.

3.) On the left column, I write out my schedule for the day, using 30 minute increments if my “productive day” is shorter, 1 hour increments if its longer. Before filling in tasks, I write-in things I MUST do at specific times (e.g., drive to work or put daughter to bed.)

4.) Next, I schedule the Big 3 tasks in between those Must Dos. As the day wanes, the short term world rears itself, so if it’s feasible, I try to schedule those tasks for early in the day.

5.) Now I know what gaps remain in my day. With this knowledge in hand, I choose the other four tasks.

6.) And then I schedule those four tasks.

7.) I repeat this process for tasks 8 and upward if need be, but I try to keep things at 7. Longer lists summon the Resistance.

8.) Then I start getting things done.

9.) Then everything goes to hell.

Well, not really, but rare is the day in which I perform my 7+ tasks as scheduled.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

— Dwight Eisenhower

Because, as we all know, life rarely unfolds as we envision it. Stuff happens. Curveballs are thrown. You get tired or your focus is thwarted by loud roommates or a friend unexpectedly drops by. Possible interruptions are too numerous to list here.

To get ’em all done, we must be nimble.

Examples of nimbleness:

• I planned on doing Task X but my car died so I did Task Y instead.
• Task 1 took much longer than I thought it would, forcing me to lower my ambitions for Task 2.

And then sometimes I just plain don’t feel like doing something at its scheduled time. I feel Resistance or a task is frustrating me or I realize I don’t have enough information to get started. I swap things around, I switch things up. I do what I need to do.

Whatever the reasons, towards the end of the day, my once-pretty task list often looks something like this:

But that’s OK. The most important thing, after all, is to get stuff done, not to live our days exactly as planned.

It’s important to plan your day and it’s equally important to plan your pivot.

To see how the Emergent Task Planner sticky pad meshes with the other components of my workflow, visit productivityjournals.com and mjmottajr.com/tools. To see the works that influenced the above method, check out this list.

So why do so many of these same people willingly give out their e-mail addresses?

Are cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses really that different?

I completely understand why Internet marketers and salespeople adopt this approach: Conversion rates are much higher for e-mails than anything else on the Internet. E-mail addresses are as much Internet currency as Bitcoin is.

I also understand why self-help, productivity-ish writers — who are marketing and selling products too — adopt this same model. Yet I can’t help but smell some hypocrisy in the air.

Many of these people — in the content on their website and in their free e-book they give you in exchange for your e-mail address — advise you to unsubscribe from everything.

But I understand why they do this. And, to be fair, you can usually Unsubscribe.

But what I do not understand is why productivity consumers go along with it. These are people who are learning how to better organize their lives, get things done, accomplish, goals, etc. Why are they distracting themselves?

The obvious response is: But how will people get paid? Are they supposed to just write for free?

There are all sorts of ways to get paid. But more importantly, that’s a silly reason to support mailing lists. It’s not the job of the consumer to worry about how the producer gets paid. The producer should be crafty. If mailing lists disappear, the crafty producers will figure out another way to do things.

It’s not unlike the reasons I’ve heard when I toyed around with the idea of starting a company. It was to be called Libeerty. The basic model was to shame stores that sold out-of-date beers and bars with dirty tap lines, and give some sort of badge of honor to stores with fresh beers and bars with clean lines.

People had no problem with the latter — clearly bars are responsible for cleaning their own tap lines.

But the former met resistance: “It really isn’t the store’s fault. It’s the brewery’s or the distributor’s,” people said to me. While this may be true, the store is much more accessible to the consumer than the brewery or distributor.

Here, too, it’s not up to the customer to figure out — or even care, really — how the salesperson. That’s their challenge. That’s capitalism.

This all begs the question: Is e-mail ever productive? I would argue that it is productive when it saves you resources — time or otherwise.

For example: Blog posts sent to e-mail in lieu of a RSS reader. This is far better than opening up a bunch of tabs and having to remember the URLs of your favorites. (I remember when I used to open up CNN in one tab, RealClearPolitics in another, Lifehacker in a third, and then my four or five favorite blogs in other tabs. Not all of the blogs would be updated. The time wasted, added up over time, is substantial.)

Another example: A course in which lessons take the form of a series of e-mails. Sometimes this is efficient.

Oh, and keeping in touch with people. Writing e-mail every so often to your closest friends and family takes far less time than hopping on Facebook or Instagram on a daily basis to keep up with people.

Well, okay, then, how do you plan to maintain contact with readers and potential customers? What’s your big alternative?

Here’s my idea:

SINGLE-PURPOSE, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE MAILING LISTS

Here’s how it could play out: 
1. “Give me your e-mail and I’ll send you free lessons and helpful tips for understanding my book.”
2. “I hope you’ve benefited from these e-mails. If you’d like to check out my second book, here’s a link. Oh, and if you want to sign up for another course, you can do so here.”
3. Then BOOM. Mailing list DELETED.

I have such a list now. I'll update here and we'll see how the experiment goes. 

1. Write blog articles/Medium stories/etc., growing an audience, creating demand for your book(s), and
2. Capture the e-mail addresses of everyone who visits your blog, forming a mailing list that you can use to sell your book(s.)

This is the conventional wisdom in self-publishing and blogging. And it makes perfect sense. Selling a book is, in many ways, no different than selling anything else: You want a reliable customer base, and you want to be able to find customers loyal enough to make multiple purchases and tell their friends.

But let’s examine what these two conventions actually mean:

1. Write every day… But don’t spend your time on the book you want to self-publish. Instead, write some much shorter pieces. Then, later, you can get to work on the actual thing you want to do. (To be fair, this might include compiling those shorter pieces… but I think we’ve all read those choppy books with three digits worth of chapters.)
2. Greet those who visit your website with a “Hey! Join my Mailing List!” In the real world, it is cashiers who offer to put us on special e-mail lists or sign us up for discount cards — store greeters don’t hound us to join anything as we enter the store. If they did, we’d turn right around, leave, and rightly consider the store to have terrible customer service.

Do I have some empirical evidence that the above advice is wrong? Nope. In fact, I bet it’s right. I won’t dare challenge it. What I will say, though, is that there is appeal in working backwards:

1. Write your book, giving yourself something to sell and multiple snippets to post as articles, stories, etc. to draw readers in.
2. Gain loyalty from readers after you’ve earned it.

Even if you’re not trying to self-publish a book, turning conventional wisdom on its head is sometimes worth considering. Google around to see what smart people think, but before acting, give thought to whether a different path — a more authentic path — makes more sense.

An important consideration when determining which to pursue now (in other words: good goal management) is considering the effect of goals upon each other.

In particular, we want to create synergies and avoid conflicts.

Goal synergy occurs when two or more goals have an effect greater than the sum of their parts.

In other words: If at all possible, pursue these goals concurrently so you reap the benefits.

Goal conflict occurs when two or more goals have an effect less than the sum of their parts.

In other words: If at all possible, it makes sense to avoid pursuing these goals concurrently. Pursue one first, and then the other down the road.

How Goals Conflict

Sometimes goals draw on the same resources, taxing our productivity system. Example: trying to start two entirely-unrelated, complex businesses.

Other times, progress towards one goal hurts progress towards another. Example: trying to train for a marathon (which involves burning substantial amounts of calories) and trying to train for a bodybuilding competition (which involves consuming substantial amounts of calories.)

These are obvious examples of conflict. Is it always so obvious?

No. These are extreme examples.

Goals conflict in myriad, often subtle ways. And mental models shield many from us too.

The conflict might be obvious, it might not. But the only way to avoid or mitigate goal conflict is to look for it.

Pretty quickly, I realized that was wildly unrealistic. I could finish the required courses and pass the comprehensive exams in two years, but one year to research and write my dissertation? No way. Spring of 2013 seemed more realistic.

Research took longer than I expected. 2014.

Then writing took longer than I expected. I graduated in spring of 2015.

It took me 6 years, twice as long as I initially planned.

The above also meant that I didn’t complete one of my other goals until years later than I initially hoped: becoming a professor. I began applying in fall of 2015, hoping to land a gig for the following year.

Nope.

So I tried again this past fall, 2016, hoping to have a contract signed by the end of the year.

Nope.

Finally, in March of 2017, I signed the contract.

If I defined my goals of graduating and employment by specific end-dates, then I had major failures in each of:

• 2012
• 2013
• 2014
• 2015
• 2016

That’s each of the past five years!

Heck, maybe it’s true. Maybe I am a failure.

But I prefer not to see it that way. Because, ultimately, I achieved what I set out to do. The road just happened to be much longer than it looked when I first began walking on it. Unless you’re flying overhead (metaphorical translation: seeing the future) , you often can’t see how long the road is. You just have to start walking.

To use another, less obvious metaphor:

Is a late baby not born?

This is where the self-delusion might come into play:

I prefer guideposts to hard-and-fast completion dates.

Guideposts are estimated, imaginary markers between where we are and where we want to go. They are not fixed in place. They are movable, both backwards and forward.

Guideposts are somewhere on the spectrum between the loosey-goosey, amorphous “I’ll do this someday” and specific, end-all be-all, life-or-death, do-or-die, now-or-never, all-or-nothing, due dates.

Clay, not clouds or concrete.

Guideposts have the primary benefits of both “I’ll do this someday” and hard-and-fast dates: They have flexibility — to account for life’s curves — and they give you a direction to walk.

Guideposts also avoid the weaknesses of both: They don’t risk the project never being completed (or even begun) and they avoid the resentment and self-hatred if dates are missed.

And, not unimportantly, it often doesn’t matter when a project is completed. Finishing a project late is (usually) infinitely better than not finishing at all. Assigning arbitrary due dates also waters down those times when there are actual due dates (like when something needs to be done for a client by X date.)

My mantra:

Guideposts, not due dates.

Where to plan, and when to move, guideposts

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.  

— Dwight Eisenhower

Even though I’m advocating that we avoid arbitrary due dates, a temporal component is still vital during the initial planning phase of a project. It’s important, when planning, to thoughtfully estimate how long a particular project will take.

Example: If I want to graduate in 3 years, I have to finish my coursework in 2 years and my dissertation in 1. Breaking it down further, I should complete X course by Y date, I should complete my research by Z date, etc., etc.

Depending on the time-boundedness of your goal, create yearly guideposts, then monthly, then weekly. At the beginning of each week, you might also create daily guideposts. (A bit too granular for me.) Guideposts are estimates, nothing more than our initial expectations of how long things will take.

As life plays out, we gain more information. Our guesses become more educated and our expectations become more realistic. We can then adjust accordingly.

Then simply move the guideposts closer (i.e., lower our expectations ) or farther away (i.e., raise our expectations.) And feel no shame.

First, its definition:

Nimbleness is the ability to act long term when the short term world rears itself.

This can take many forms. Here are some examples off the top of my head (they’re on the top of my head because each happened to me recently): 

• spouse’s knock on the office door; 
• lightning ruining a run; 
• the infant up all night.

It’s easy, at this point, to close up shop: 

• Well, I was interrupted, guess I’m done for the day.
• I’ll go for a run tomorrow. It’s gonna be beautiful out.
• I’m tired, I’ll just plop on the couch and binge Netflix!

The truth is: there’s often a way to still be productive. Maybe not on the task or exercise you planned on doing… but on something else that you can do:

• I can jot down where I left off, answer my spouse’s question, then get back to work.
• Yoga it is!
• Since I’m tired, I guess I can clean the kitchen or brainstorm some ideas.

That’s nimbleness.

But what does “Mind” mean?

I’m not sure.

The “mind” is an ambiguous concept. Neuroscientists, physicists, and others debate its base meaning. People refer to “exercising the mind” but also to “states of mind.” You’ve probably heard people say they want to “get their mind right” or that others have “lost their mind.”

I won’t try to define “Mind” in the neurological or philosophical sense — I’ll leave that to people far smarter than I. Instead, I’ll define “Mind” as a routinized practice. 

More specifically, a mental practice is:

Anything, done regularly, with the intention of increasing one’s knowledge of self or world, or informing one’s thoughts or perceptions.

With that definition in mind, two practices come to mind.

Learning

The most obvious way to exercise the mind is through learning. But here too we run into a definitional problem: What the heck is learning?

And, even harder, what isn’t learning? Aren’t we always learning? What can’t we learn from?

Because of this, a mental practice should be bounded. We must be learning some thing for some purpose. Otherwise, we end up learning a little about a lot, rather than a lot about a few key areas of interest or benefit.

Journaling

There’s another way to exercise the mind: journaling — the daily-ish semi-freeform writing one’s thoughts. (Which I write about here.)

In many ways, learning and journaling are two sides of the same coin.

Both involve exploration and experience. 

With both, we’re trying to ascertain truths, and trying to find them from different directions. 

In the case of learning, you’re exploring and experiencing worlds and ideas you’d otherwise not be exposed to. 

With journaling, you are exploring your own experiences.

Together

Learning and journaling are particularly synergistic.

By better understanding the world (learning), we’re better understanding ourselves. And by better understanding ourselves (journaling), we better understand the world.

Takeaway

I have no idea what “Mind” means, but I know two, synergistic ways to exercise it.

That’s enough for me.

But equally important (and sometimes more important) are tasks that don’t involve doing something important, but rather involve deciding something important.

The critical decisions that are made in between the pareto actions. They require thinking and decision-making, not physical action.

I call these pareto decisions.

Usually, these decisions happen while performing an action. We stop writing and slam out foreheads into our palms. We groan and we daze off, ultimately wasting our most valuable time and resources.

But our most important space-times ought to be reserved for those tasks that most deserve them: the tough stuff we have to slog through manually. The actions, not the decisions.

I keep a short list of pareto decisions in my head, and I try to think through them when I am otherwise unable to do take other long term action but am still feeling energetic and focused. Driving is good for this, as is exercising.

Or maybe I just finished a task and have a few minutes to kill. It happens all the time in those “in-between” moments.

Or, when we are participating in the short term world: Next time you are in the middle of a conversation and your conversant starts playing with their phone, cue up a pareto decision.

There are plenty of chances to think.

Might as well use them effectively.

Will this practice dramatically change your life?

No. Of course not. Very few practices will. And most that promise to do so, won’t.

But the war between a long term person and the short term world is won or lost in thousands of battles. Might as well win one of them.

1.) My book is free Saturday, May 27 - Monday, May 29. Amazon limits how often I can make a book free so you might as well grab it now. Even if you don't own a Kindle, there are 1,483 other ways to read it.

2.) I launched a free e-mail course that serves as a supplement to the book. (It also has standalone value.) If you've read this blog for awhile, you know I hate mailing lists, so as soon as the course is over, your e-mail address will be deleted.

I divided them by general topic:

Bibliographical

Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Penguin, 2013.

Currey, Mason. Daily Rituals, Knopf, 2013.

Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man’s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press, 2006.

Ferriss, Timothy. Tools of Titans, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Efficiency

Ferriss, Timothy. The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated, Harmony, 2009.

Womack, Jason W. Your Best Just Got Better, John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Emotional Intelligence

Bradberry, Travis, and Jean Greaves. Emotional Intelligence 2.0, TalentSmart, 2009

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Macmillan, 2011.

Entrepreneurship

Flogging, Buck. Kill Your Blog: 12 Reasons Why You Should Stop Blogging!, 2014.

Guillebeau, Chris. The $100 Startup, Pan Macmillan, 2012.

Focus

Chandler, Steve. Time Warrior, Lightning Source Incorporated, 2010.

Crenshaw, Wes. I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not, 2014.

Newport, Cal. Deep Work, Grand Central Publishing, 2016.

Pink, Daniel J. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Riverhead Books, 2011.

Growth and Development

Covey, Stephen The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Simon and Schuster, 2013.

Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline, Crown Business, 2010.

Habits

Guise, Stephen. Mini Habits, Selective Entertainment LLC, 2013.

Maurer, Robert. One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Workman Publishing, 2014.

Olson, Jeff, and John David Mann. The Slight Edge, Greenleaf Book Group, 2013.

Mindfulness

Dini, Kourosh. Creating Flow With Omnifocus, 2015.

Levin, Daniel. The Zen Book, Hay House, Inc, 2005.

McKeown, Greg. Essentialism, Random House, 2014.

Motivational

Altucher, J. Choose Yourself!, 2015.

Atkins, Peter. Life Is Short and So Is This Book, Peter Atkins, 2011.

Henry, Todd. Die Empty, Penguin, 2015.

Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich, Campuzano.

Ravikant, Kamal. Live Your Truth, 2013.

Organization

Dini, Kourosh. Workflow Mastery: Building from the Basics, 2014.

Kondo, Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Ten Speed Press, 2014.

Systems

Allen, David. Getting Things Done, Penguin, 2015.

Meier, J D. Getting Results the Agile Way, Innovation Playhouse LLC, 2010.

Wisdom

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations, Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

Epictetus. The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is the Way, Penguin, 2014.

Irvine, William B. A Guide to the Good Life, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Synergy occurs when two or more things (e.g., goals or mechanical gears) have an effect greater than the sum of their parts.

Usually, when people talk about setting goals, pursuing goals, etc., they discuss goals in isolation from each other. This is probably because it’s easier to think of goals as separate entities. It’s easier to choose them and define them, and in our minds, they’re associated with different hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

Example: Last year I was driving an hour to-and-from work, and they happened to be AM hours, my peak energy period. What to do? I decided to start dictating some books I was trying to write. One fiction (which is resting for a bit) and one nonfiction book on productivity. I dictated the fiction book on the way to work, the productivity book on the way home.

How is this synergistic?

While drafting the novel, I learned all about my productivity habits and those of others. This informed the drafting of my other book — more often than not, the thinking and dictating on the commute in gave me something to think and dictate on the commute out.

In turn, my writing of a productivity book forced me to ask tough questions of myself, ultimately improving my efficacy in drafting the novel.

Done alone, I’m not sure I would’ve stuck with the draft of the novel, and it would be worse off.

And done alone, many of the most important insights in my book wouldn’t have been made.

Another example: Yoga and meditation. Both are great by themselves, but the former is usually taught along with the latter for synergistic reasons. Meditation, done first, helps the practitioner get their mind in tune with their body. Meditation after a yoga session then connects the body back to the mind.

Or: Running and then doing some challenging mental activity. During the run, think through the task. Doing so distracts you from the tightness in your calves or how nice it would be to stop. After the run, you’re all adrenaline-d up, the thoughts are flowing. Next thing you know, the procrastinated, anxiety-ridden task is checked off. Boom goes the cannon.

Synergy also occurs when we use one goal to motivate action towards another goal: By alternating sessions of each, we motivate ourselves to push through what we don’t enjoy to get to the actions we do enjoy. Maybe (1) applying for jobs really motivates you to (2) complete your side project.

Do you have synergies in your daily schedule? If not, consider whether a change makes sense for you.

Do you see opportunities to increase synergy? Consider taking advantage of them.

The key word here is consider. No productivity principle applies to everyone. But this one — it comes pretty close.

Worthy of Emulation

Self-awareness

Being quick to anger (like many of us), Jefferson employed the Count to Ten rule before responding.

And, being realistic, he kept the Count to One Hundred rule on hand too. (How’s that for an awkward pause?)

Emotional intelligence

According to Jefferson:

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

Yup.

Mindfulness

Another one of Jefferson’s sweet maxims:

Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.

Experiment: Do the dishes just because, then some other time, do the dishes because someone asks you to.

See the difference?

Wherever you are, be there.

As you might expect from someone as productive as Jefferson, he did not like to sit idly, even in the company of others:

[When we’re together,] we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Music, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions.

Removing needless anxiety

Echoing Epictetus, Jefferson implored people to save their anxiety for things that were certain to happen:

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!

Piece of paper, folded in half. In one column, the things you’re anxious about. In the other, checkmarks for those that actually came to pass. After a few weeks or so, take a look.

Told you.

Organizational efficiency

Jefferson was obsessed with efficiency (perhaps too much so, discussed below.) He was constantly learning how to make things more efficient and well-organized. In addition to the lifehacks described in Part One, Jefferson re-designed the layout of his home and organization of his kitchen based on efficiencies he saw in European manors.

Zero

One of the foremost productivity maxims: An empty mind is a clear mind. What I call the Zero State in my book.

Jefferson practiced this, keeping a little notebook with him at all times. He was very attached to this notebook (not unlike my relationship with my journals), transcribing his notes to a different notebook before erasing and using it again the next day.

Long term thinking

I love this quote. It reflects both long term thinking and the importance of chipping away at big projects:

Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves!

Worthy of Avoidance

Neglecting the short term world

As I’ve written about at length, long term productivity requires a careful balancing of the short term world’s obligations too.

This includes day-to-day things like paying bills.

When Jefferson died, he was 2.4 million in debt. (Clearly his dollars and cents quote above was purely metaphorical.)

The details (like paying bills) become the big things if we let them.

Having no boundary between work and life

This is a picture of Jefferson’s bed, located directly between his office and living quarters:

Credit: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Jefferson has this amazing, almost beyond-imagination mansion/palace, and he can’t set aside a quiet part of the house for his work?

Enough said.

Overquantification

Jefferson wrote down and measured everything. Everything. In some ways, this is a good thing. In other ways, this might be a little much:

Never delegating

It is sometimes good and efficient to delegate a task. Yet Jefferson says:

Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.*

*This is also a terrible quote for someone who owned several slaves.

Hustling for the sake of hustling

Jefferson was one of the many people who said:

Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

But… that’s not true. Sometimes it makes perfect, long term sense to put something off.

Good planning is good long term planning. Checking off a day’s to-do list is not necessarily checking off a week’s or month’s or year’s to-do list. And it’s the latter that count.

(I’m thinking of writing more about “presidential productivity,” so if you would like to see more stuff like this, please let me know!)