Steve Corona's Blog

The 5 Best TED Talks I've Ever Watched

2016-01-17T00:00:00Z

Wish you constantly had something interesting to talk about? TED Talks are one of the best sources of insperation, thought fodder, and background noise to get the gears turning. My favorite morning ritual? Watch a TED talk to reward myself after a good workout.

Here are a few of my all-time favorite TED talks, in no particular order:

3 things I learned while my plane crashed

This is what happens when you reply to spam email

The levitating superconductor

Have we reached the end of physics?

How to control someone else’s arm with your brain

Best books I read in 2015

2016-01-02T00:00:00Z

In 2015, I challanged myself to read 100 books before the end of the year. Unfortunately, I didn’t reach my goal of 100 books— I got busy writing my own book and life generally just got in the way.

The good news is I still read a TON of books. Here are my top 10, roughly sorted by how awesome I thought they were:

1) Total Recall: My Unbelievable True Life Story (Link to Amazon)

Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s autobiography, weighing in at a whopping 658 pages, came highly recommended from Eddie Machaalani, CEO of Bigcommerce. It ended up being my favorite January book. Arnold lived an incredible life— from conquering bodybuilding, to making his first million as a real-estate mogul, dabbling in movies, and later on Governor of California.

The stories are humorous, but valuable, and the takeaway is just the pure unwillingness to settle. I loved it.

2) A Short History of Nearly Everything (Link to Amazon)

Picking #2 was by far the hardest. Total Recall was the clear standout, but I’ve read so many books that everything else in the top 10 is GREAT.

I picked A Short History of Nearly Everything book because it’s the book that I learned the most from. This book is, well, a short history of the entire universe. It’s packed with ideas and factoids about our universe that will get you thinking about where we come from.

3) Kitchen Confidential (Link to Amazon)

Something like an autobiography, Anthony Bourdain walks you through his adult life while he was trying to make it as a chef. If I didn’t already know he was famous, I wouldn’t have thought he was going to make it to the end of the book alive.

Full of drugs, sex, and hilarious stories. It’s raw, uncut, amazing.

4) How to Fly a Horse (Link to Amazon)

As a book that claims to be the The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, I had a high expectations for this book and it delivered. How to Fly a Horse busts the myth that there are “magic moments of creation"— that creation is not magic, it is simply work.

5) Meat Eater (Link to Amazon)

Before going on my first hunting trip, I wanted to read something to give me an idea of what to expect while out in the woods. Meat Eater delivered— with a lifetime full of hunting stories, Steve Rinella gives you a taste of what it’s like to be a hunter.

6) Racing the Rain (Link to Amazon)

Racing the Rain is a continuation of one of my favorite novels, Once a Runner. If you ran track or cross country in high school, or have ever been addicted to running, I really recommend that you give this series a read. Simply put, it’s a romantical look at running through Quenton Cassidy’s eyes.

7) Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating (Link to Amazon)

This book promises to deliver a economics lessons through his experiences on OkCupid and Match.com. The book was great, I learned a little bit about economics and also how to write the perfect Tinder message.

8) An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (Link to Amazon)

Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, has been to space 3 times, and even lived on the ISS for 6 months.

What I really loved about Chris’ story is the amazing pursuit and determination to become an astronaut, starting from when he was a child. The tidbits you learn about flying to space throughout the book are pretty excellent, too.

9) Do the Work (Link to Amazon)

My favorite book of all time is The War of Art— a quick read that resonantes with my inner procrastinator so hard. Do the Work is the practical continuation of The War of Art some blasphemists even say they like this book more.

10) Driven to Distraction (Link to Amazon)

Read this if you’ve ever been curious about ADD/ADHD. I learned, for example, that many of the symptoms that I commonly associated with ADHD are not actually the symptoms that we should be looking for.

What I learned from Max Levchin about starting companies and morning routines

2015-05-30T00:00:00Z

This week, I got the pleasure of listening to Max Levchin address the Bigcommerce office with some thoughts about business, entrepreneurism, and helmets that help you re-grow hair.

Max Levchin, by the way, was one of the original cofounders of PayPal and has been involved in a handful of “other companies you’ve probably heard of"— Yelp, Yahoo!, Evernote and more. Right now, he’s working on a payments startup— Affirm. A pretty shining resume, to stay the least.

One of the brilliant concepts that came out during the discussion and really stuck with me was how Max comes up with ideas for new companies, basically, how his "idea engine” works.

Write down ideas and review them

Max keeps a log of ideas that he reviews every few months.

Easy, possible even obvious, but this is something that I know I personally don’t do in practice. I write down ideas almost religiously, but I rarely actually review them.

I guess it begs to ask the question— what’s the point of writing down ideas if you’re never going to look at them again?

One of my own habits for god knows how long has been to “flex my idea muscle” by writing down 10 ideas per day. It’s been helpful, but I can’t think of a single time that I’ve reviewed my idea journal.

By the way, Max mentioned that 99.9% of the stuff that he writes down ends up being really nuts and/or terrible.

Max Levchin’s 2-Step Process for “finding pretty good companies”

Max shared his 2-step process for a “pretty legitmate path for finding pretty good companies”. I’d say PayPal is pretty good.

1. Get really excited about a segment or theme

Instead of getting pumped about a particular idea, get excited about the entire segment or theme. An entire industry.

Max says that “getting really excited about building an idea is a surefire way to find out it’s a bad idea or that it’s a really good idea that somebody else already built their business around”.

I tend to agree, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen into this trap. If you get more excited about building the idea than the industry around it, you’re probably starting the business for the wrong reason.

2. Dig really deep into the theme

“Start digging into an exciting segment. You’ll find that 90% has already been explored, built, failed, bought, sold, but if you dig long enough, you’ll find that 10% that no one else has gotten into yet.”

The secret to finding the 10% is simple (but not easy)— you need to know almost everything about the industry to realize when you’ve uncovered the diamond. To realize that no one else has gone this deep. Start with broad conversations and drive deeper until you find it. Breadth to depth.

Max’s Daily Routine

Max answered one of my all-time favorite questions—

“What does your morning routine look like? What are the 5 things you do to start the day?”

Max feels uncomfortable if he doesn’t follow this precise morning routine. I love this. That’s how you know it’s not a bullshit answer, that he actually practices it.

Get up pretty early, around 5-5:30AM
Read some email, respond to some email
By 6:45AM, take the dog out for a walk
Think through the day ahead
Write down the 5 most important things today
Spend time with kids and family
Ride on bike, either indoor or outdoors
Get to work between 8:30-9:30AM
2-3x per week work late, rest of time home for dinner

The most important part of his routine is the ability to get alot of thinking done before everybody else is awake.

I love the concept of writing down the 5 most important things to accomplish, instead of overburdening yourself with a massive todo list that’s next-to-impossible to accomplish.

The other thing that I love (but also hate at the same time) is Max’s dedication to riding his bike every morning. I’ve struggled with the morning exercise regime for longer than I can remember, deferring to the evening run.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share the top 5 things you do everyday to kickstart your morning routine.

Favorite reads from Jan-Feb 2015

2015-03-14T00:00:00Z

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog this year! It’s because I’ve been busy reading :)

This year, I set my reading goal ambitiously high at 100 books— or about 8 books per month. While it seems crazy, it’s only about 55 pages per night.

So far, I’ve read 12 books (3406 pages, about 286 pages per book).

These are my reads from Jan and Feb 2015, roughly sorted by awesomeness. I think I’m a little bit behind schedule but I should still have no problem hitting 100.

Total Recall: My Unbelievable True Life Story (Link to Amazon)

The stories are humorous, but valuable, and the takeaway is just the pure unwillingness to settle. I loved it.

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (Link to Amazon)

I didn’t intend on January being an autobiography month, but this is another fantastic gem to read. Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, has been to space 3 times, and even lived on the ISS for 6 months.

The Boron Letters (Link to Amazon)

The truth is, I’ve read this before. It’s just so good. Gary Halbert was known as the best copywriter alive.. until he went to prison for fraud. He wrote letters to his son while he was serving time.

This book is a collection of those letters and damn, they are excellent. They make you look at writing in a different light (it’s more than just AIDA).

The River of Doubt (Link to Amazon)

After his failed re-election for presidency, Theodore Roosevelt took a trip down an uncharted area of the Amazon river. His team was so unprepared, they barely made it out alive.. millimeters from death.

This book came highly recommended from a close friend, and now I see why— the story was excellent and almost unbelievable as non-fiction.

Kitchen Confidential (Link to Amazon)

Full of drugs, sex, and hilarious stories. It’s a raw, uncut, amazing.

The Man Rockefeller Suit (Link to Amazon)

Incredible story of a German immigrant, “Clark Rockefeller”. While not actually a Rockefeller (or named Clark), he lied, cheated, and stole his way to the top over the span of 20 years.

Not even his wife (of 10 years) knew he was a total fraud. Absolutely a true story and an interesting read.

Think and Grow Rich (Link to Amazon)

A classic, originally published in the 1930, this book is FILLED TO THE BRIM with wisdom. I tried to read it when I was 22, but never finished it. I thought it was too boring at the time, but I think I was just too young to understand the lessons.

I had a few “mind-blown” moments while reading— for example, the simple idea that everything in your reality started with nothing more than an idea. Sometimes, when you dream big it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But I remember this— every idea, at one point, started with nothing more than a thought.

Fight Club: A Novel (Link to Amazon)

I’ve seen the movie at least 5 times, but never read the book. Really quick read, and extremely enjoyable. After reading the book, I think the movie did it justice. To me, the book had a little bit more of a schizophrenic quality that the movie didn’t show. It’s pretty clear early on in the book that Tyler isn’t real, but less obvious (and more spoiler-ish) in the movie.

The Art of Being Unmistakable (Link to Amazon)

Quick read about living. I enjoyed it. My favorite takeaway— “it doesn’t matter because you’ll be dead soon anyways”.

P.S Your Cat is Dead (Link to Amazon)

Another quick read, it’s originally a play, funny and without an overall point. Read this for enjoyment.

The Charisma Myth (Link to Amazon)

I liked the premise of the book, but found the lessons to be pretty obvious. I picked up a few tidbits though, like how to keep yourself engaged when you’d otherwise go into “autopilot” mode.

20,000 days and counting (Link to Amazon)

This book had excellent reviews, but I didn’t enjoy it that much. It seemed to lack real substance and was a bit preachy.The one thing I liked was the idea of tracking “days alive” milestones and celebrating them. I just barely missed celebrating the 10,000th day that I’ve been alive, I guess I’ll have to wait until 11,000 to celebrate.

What were your favorite reads this year? Any book recommendations? Comment below, I need to keep the book pipeline full!

How to become your own Messiah in 2015 (and why I HATE Resolutions)

2014-12-31T00:00:00Z

It was the end of 2006 and my life was a disaster. I was sleeping on the floor, curled up in the corner of my rented bedroom. I couldn’t afford a bed. I made $15,392.19 in 2006. I had over $10,000 in credit card debt.

I wanted to make a million dollars but I didn’t know how. My water got shut off because I stopped paying the bills. You can go without paying your water bill for months before they actually cut you off. Once it’s off, you still have whatever’s left in the hot water tank before you’re really empty.

I begged God for help, but he couldn’t help me. I needed to become my own Messiah, I needed to save myself.

2006 was the first year that I did an “Annual Review”. I had a crush on a girl. She had a blog and I’d secretly read it. She posted her own a “Yearly Review”. I wrote one too, because I thought it was a great idea. But mostly because I wanted her to like me.

I’ve done an Annual Review every year since 2006. They’re extremely personal so I don’t share them. I don’t think I could be completely honest if I knew that someone else might read them.

Why you need to stop what you’re doing and write your annual review today

Every December, I read through my past reviews. It’s so powerful, so damn motivating, to see myself progress and grow through the years. You get to see how your own priorities shift as you grow and morph into a better version of yourself.

The reviews are simple— I try to answer these six simple questions:

What did I gain this year?
What did I lose this year?
What are the highlights? Things I want to remember forever?
What went great?
What sucked?
What do I wish was different?

Take time, really set aside an hour or so to answer these and come back to them for a week or month, however long it takes to flush them out completely. You’ll regret not taking it seriously when you look back in a year.

By the way, I also recommend storing these somewhere safe, like Evernote or Dropbox. I lost my review from 2006 in a hard drive crash and I regret it every single year when I look back. It sucks. I’ll never remember exactly what I was thinking or feeling when my life was in the gutter.

I hate resolutions because no one actually does them. They’re meaningless. It’s a kind of guilty pleasure— pretending that this year is going to be the one that you change, that you do something different. But 12 months go by, and you’re still fat/smoking/broke. I know because I’ve been there.

The truth is, making bold resolutions feels good— so good, that making the resolution actually feels better than doing the resolution (the hard part).

How to cheat on your Resolutions

Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions (and not doing them), draft a “2015 Master Plan”. This is a fun exercise, but you’re not allowed to do it until after your annual review.

Step 1: Create 6 sections— Travel, Money, Health, Creative, Career/Business, and Learning. Come up with atleast 10 goals for each section. Think big, not just “realistic”. Make them crazy-stupid— hairy, ambitious goals.

Step 2: Break each goal down into 12 monthly goals. If you can’t easily break one down, it’s because you haven’t defined it well enough. This is your 12 month plan. Follow it for the next 365 days.

Step 3: Visualize & read your goals every morning. Humans are awful at remembering. We forget even our most burning desires. The boring parts of life get in the way. I write down my 5 year goals every morning, because otherwise I’d forget what they were.

“Make big plans and live your fucking life.”

How to finally start meditating (like a pro)

2014-12-27T00:00:00Z

“If you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life.” Tony Robbins

I’ve failed at a daily meditation habit more times than I can count. I used to think it was ridiculous, a waste of time, new-agey eastern-philosophy pseudoscience.

I was so damn wrong.

I didn’t get it— I’d close my eyes and sit on the floor, trying so hard to.. I don’t know.. not think about anything? It wasn’t working.

I didn’t make any progress.

I’d quit, decide to give it another shot, and quit again. No matter how hard I’d try, I couldn’t see the value in meditating. I felt like an idiot sitting on the floor, looking for Buddha.

It just wasn’t working for me.

I tried different methods. One suggestion from James Altucher— spend a minute imagining yourself meditating for 30 minutes. Think about what it would feel like. I did this for a month.

The good: I was actually able to do it. The bad? It didn’t really help. It was a start, I guess. But no matter how I hard I tried, I couldn’t get myself to just sit in silence for 10 minutes.

It was like my meditation muscle was broken.

If you spend 5 minutes researching the most successful people, you’ll quickly see a pattern of meditation emerge. Successful people meditate. Why can’t I get it to work for me?

I tried something new— And I finally figured out how to meditate.

My first attempts at meditation weren’t particularly calculated— I assumed that you sat in silence, maybe put on some zen playlist from Spotify, and just, you know, stopped thinking about things.

Instead, I tried Guided Meditation. There’s a bunch of ways to do guided meditation, but my favorite, the one I’ve had the most success with is the Headspace course. By the way, I don’t make any money or anything off of this, I just love it that much.

It turns out I had no clue how to actually meditate.

Guided Meditation works like this— you put on a track and a guide gently talks you through the 10-30 minute session.

Without guided meditation, I could barely last for 3 minutes without getting bored, anxious, and giving up. My first guided meditation session? 10 minutes. No Problem. It almost seemed too easy and I was hungry for more.

I’m up to 15 minutes of daily meditation and after becoming thoroughly hooked this month, I’m committing to 365 days of meditation in 2015. It’s become a ritual that I look forward to everyday.

So what’s the secret anyway? Why is meditation valuable?

I see two distinct benefits from daily meditation.

The first happens during the actual meditation— when I’m sitting with my eyes closed, listening to the guide. Once I finally empty out my mind, I really enjoy the feeling of calm and silence. It reminds me of previous experiences in an isolation chamber.

Effortless relaxation, disconnecting the mind from the body, sensory deprivation.

The second happens immediately after I open my eyes after the session. It’s the feeling of waking up from an incredible night of sleep. Things just seem to feel different. Like I’m more aware, grounded, conscious.

I track my mood on a daily basis using POMS and there’s a very positive correlation between meditating and my “tension-anxiety” score.

If there’s one thing that you change in your life, I highly recommend that you give meditation a shot. Even if you’ve tried before and failed (I did, so many times), try guided meditation— I think you’ll be surprised to find that you can actually do it.

P.S— I’m holding a book giveaway to close out 2014 and 53 lucky winners will win 104 books. The contest ends in a few days, so enter to win before it’s too late

You have a .15% chance of dying in 2015

2014-12-14T00:00:00Z

Here’s the cold, hard truth— you’re quickly running out of time.

Between 25-35 years old? You have about a .15% chance of dying in 2015. That’s a 1 in 750 chance. Decent odds, but there’s an inherent reality to face:

There’s a non-zero chance that 2015 will be the last New Year you celebrate.

Mortality is real. Especially your own mortality.

There’s a non-zero chance that 2015 will be the last New Year you celebrate.

“The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.” Seneca

How much of your life did you actually live this year? How much of it was spent grinding away? At the job you hate? Sitting in traffic? Doing busy work? Doing bullshit.

Hint: Most of it

Life is finite

We’re frugal with dollars and cents but treat our time as limitless. It’s the opposite. Time is our real currency— there’s an exact number of grains in our hourglass and they can’t ever be refilled.

The point isn’t to be depressed by our limited existence. Embrace it. Work within the parameters, get busy living. You have two choices— you can squander decades and only live for years, or you can squeeze decades of living within a single life. It’s your choice.

Everyday you need to remind yourself that life is finite. The glass will eventually be empty. I remind myself by tracking a life progress bar. Grey blocks are spent, white is the amount left. Even at 27, I’m feeling the crunch. It reminds me to make everyday important. To live each day.

You can build your own with this Google Docs spreadsheet.

Homework

By the way, you might feel a little uncomfortable. That’s good. It’s worthless to be in denial about your own mortalilty (it doesn’t make it less real).

You can’t be great until you realize that there’s limited time to actually become great.

Read On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (it’s free, you have no excuse). This is a powerful piece of writing and well worth the small investment.
Start thinking about your obnoxiously massive goals for 2015. You’ll need them for my follow-up article.

Comment below and tell me— is this depressing or inspirational? What are your massive goals for 2015?

6 lessons I learned sleeping on the floor for a year

2014-12-06T00:00:00Z

I got kicked out of college when I was 19. My GPA was 0.33. I was broke and too ashamed to ask for help. It was the end of the year and everyone was packing up for the summer. I was packing up forever.

I gave away most of my stuff. I was too lazy to move. I was almost too lazy to be alive. I sold my laptop to some guy from Craigslist for $500 bucks.

I slept in my car the first two nights. I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I fucked up. I was embarrassed. I was scared that people would think I was a loser.

I pulled my car into the back of a hotel parking lot and slept there. I didn’t know where else to go.

Sleeping in your car is pretty challenging. You don’t actually do much sleeping. I played “Brick Attack” on my flip phone and watched cars drive by to pass the time. I snuck into the hotel and ate breakfast from the buffet. I was sort of staying there.

$10 an hour doesn’t go very far, but my web developer job was the best thing I had going for myself. $400 bucks a week, I was scraping by.. even in middle-of-nowhere Rochester, NY.

The commute was pretty easy, though. You just wake up, brush you teeth in the parking lot, and drive to work.

After 2 days of hunting, I finally found a room. $375 a month. Utilities included. I moved in with my new roomie, Mark, the very next day. I was tired of sleeping in the back seat of my Toyota.

I had about $200 left over after my first month’s rent. It was the poorest I’d ever been.

Of course, I spent it all immediately. I bought a really expensive, high-quality air mattress. I slept on it for one night and returned it the next day so I could buy a cheap air mattress and a cheap desk.

Growing up, my dad told me that I had “caviar taste on a peanut butter budget”. I think he meant “be realistic” but I always took it as a compliment— because I had good taste. I didn’t like settling for peanut butter.

I really wanted an Xbox, but it cost $300. There was no way I could afford it. It was 25% of my monthly income and I was broke.

By the way, I didn’t have any credit either. My credit score was something like 520, because I didn’t pay my bills. I had like $10,000 in debt that I hadn’t paid. When the debt collectors called me, I yelled and argued. I called them assholes, but I was the asshole.

There was no way I could afford the Xbox.

I bought a brand new Xbox. And then I sold the brand new Xbox to a pawn shop 6 days later.

Turns out, I was right, I couldn’t afford it. And now I was short $200 on rent. I think the guy gave me $180 for the Xbox. He probably thought I was an idiot. He was right.

Lesson 1: I (finally) took unequivocal responsibility for my situation

This is going to sound ridiculous, but..

I remember the defining moment when I hit rock bottom.

My air mattress popped. Not an exciting, blood-rushing pop, just a slow and mushy deflation. It just stopped.. holding air. It gave up.

My air mattress died.

I rolled up the lifeless body into the corner of my room and started sleeping on top of it.

The old me would have returned it to Wal-Mart and tried to get a new one. But I finally had enough. I didn’t want to live like this anymore.

I slept on the fucking floor for the next year. I was tired of living life like an amateur.

“I slept on the fucking floor for the next year. I was tired of living life like an amateur.”

I realized that it was all my fault. My own mess to relish in. I got myself here and only I could get myself out. It was my fault. I fucked up.

Lesson 2: I taught myself how to sell

College is an expensive waste of time.

I was $70,000 in debt, making $400 bucks a week with a $500 student loan payment. I was only there for 2 years. I didn’t learn much.

There’s ONE thing I wish that I learned in college— how to sell. Nobody told me I’d need to know how to be a salesman.

Everyone said that selling wasn’t important. They said I could just be a programmer. That I didn’t need to sell unless I was going into business. Plus, selling is irky, right? They said “only car salesmen with beige sportcoats and bad toupée’s need to know how to sell.”

They are wrong. “Hey, I need some money, give me a job” isn’t going to get you work. Being persuasive is a skill. Selling things, or more importantly selling yourself, is an invaluable skill. It’s teachable and most people are AWFUL at it. I was.

I’d give up everything I know about programming and computers to be an expert at selling. You’re selling every second of the day— and you’re either good at it or bad at it.

You’re selling every second of the day— and you’re either good at it or bad at it.

Gary Halbert was a direct marketing genius. He went to prison in 1984 for fraud. While incarcerated at the Boron Federal Prison Camp, he wrote letters about marketing to his son— lovingly titled “The Boron Letters”.

The letters contain phenomenal lessons about selling. I read them every month. Some lady on Facebook told me that I should read the bible instead of letters from some guy that went to prison for fraud. She’s wrong. I’ve read the bible and this is better.

Lesson 3: Ask for what you want. Over and over again.

When I got my first salaried job my boss said “We’ll give you 60K”. I said, “Okay! I can’t wait to start!”

I called him back an hour later and told him that I’d prefer 80K. He said “No”, but called me the next day and said “Fine”. My mom told me I was an idiot for negotiating. But I wasn’t negotiating— I was asking, and I had no clue how to ask for what I wanted.

Asking is pre-negotiation. It sets the boundaries. If you ask for 60, you won’t get 80. I didn’t know how to ask.

You have to constantly ask for the things you want. I’m afraid of being annoying. I’m scared of over-staying my welcome, being obnoxious, annoying, and asking too much.

But no one cares what you want. They care about what you want as much as the lady at the DMV. You need to keep asking. Maybe they say “No”. So what? Ask other people— there’s 7 billion of them. Want a promotion? First ask your boss. Then ask other companies.

I went on an interview once and had to take a Javascript programming test. Some guy popped his head into the room and said, “By the way, how much pay were you looking for?”

“100K.”
“No can do”.

By the way, I was living off of kidney beans and buffalo chicken nuggets at this point in my life. I had just turned 20. I was $375 away from being homeless.

I asked if he wanted me to leave. He told me to finish the test. I left anyway because I didn’t know Javascript. They didn’t offer me 100K. But I kept asking and someone else did.

Lesson 4: I ignored “best behavior”

“The risk of insult is the price of clarity.” The Wizard of Ads

My Mom used to tell me to “be on my best behavior”. What she really meant was “be boring and don’t stand out”.

Once, I went out to eat with a new friend. We were going to order sandwiches. She asked me what kind I wanted. I said, “I don’t know, what kind are you going to get?” I was literally afraid I would insult her with my choice of sandwich topping.

I was living life with “best behavior” mode engaged.

Each person has three different lives— the person they pretend to be, the person they are, and the person they can be.

It’s too complicated. Just murder the person that you pretend to be. Plunge a knife right into his heart. Focus your energy on making sure that the person you are is the same as the person you can be.

When you meet someone, treat them like you’ve known them for 10 years. Be overly comfortable. Don’t be on your best behavior. Don’t be formal because you’re worried about offending them. We all hate formality.

Lesson 5: I started writing (and reading) daily

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. Steven Pressfield

There was nothing I hated more than writing. I’d rather go to the dentist and have all my teeth pulled than stare at an empty screen and blinking cursor.

It turns out I didn’t hate writing. I just hated writing like a staunchy jackass— the high school and college formula for writing.

How to be ignored your entire life and bore everyone

Write a long, boring introductions and only talk about yourself
Write exactly how you were taught in school

Everything you’ve learned about writing in school is wrong. It’s stupid. Only boring people write like that. Formal words are boring words.

Read “This book will teach you how to write better” by Neville Medhora. You’ll thank me when you finally stop writing like a jackass and start writing like a real person.

No one wants to hear your story. They don’t care about your passion. All they want to know is how you can fix their problems. Start your next email with that.

By the way, you should read every single night. Even when I was sleeping on the floor, lying on top of my dead, lumpy air mattress, I read everyday. If you want to get better at writing you need to read. It primes the pump.

Lesson 6: I realized that education isn’t the same as learning

“It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one’s own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher.

Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this— Let there be space between you and the book.” Seneca

People think you need to go to college to learn, but they’re wrong. Learning and education aren’t the same.

With a natural desire to learn, a formal education is a waste of time. It’s lacking. And for the self-starter, education is boring and rigid.

You can pay $70,000 for a piece of paper that says you’re educated, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve learned a thing. Real learning comes in a different form— it’s a bookshelf with unorganized stacks. It’s blood and sweat. Daily practice. It’s doing the thing over and over again.

Real learning is blood and sweat. Daily practice. It’s doing the thing over and over again.

Learning is a lifestyle. Education gets you in the chair, but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you learn. Pick up a book and start reading. Practice it. Implement it.

College taught me to be rigid instead of flexible. I didn’t learn anything in college that I couldn’t have taught myself, except how to pay off debt.

How can you stay hyperfocused?

2014-10-26T00:00:00Z

For most people, the word “procrastination” is like this totally loaded term.

It’s a scapegoat. Truth is, when you’re truly procrastinating, you don’t realize that you’re doing it.

Procrastination is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

When revealed, it loses all of its power— the element of surprise.

“I don’t have enough time time”
“I’m too busy to do this right now”
“I need to research it first”
“I need to make a Facebook page to start my business”

That’s true procrastination.

When you can clearly identify that you didn’t make any progress, well that’s not procrastination. It’s a totally different animal entirely.

Procrastination makes you feel like you’re making progress. Sitting around wasting time isn’t procrastination.

Not starting is not procrastination.

My favorite book, “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, identifies this so clearly, so lucidly, it’s nearly impossible to do it justice.

(I love this book so much that I order 20 copies every year to give away. I read it once every few months, but I should read it every week.)

Resistance is the invisible hand that’s holding you back

Resistance stops you from doing your best work. Resistance is that feeling in the pit of your gut when it’s finally time to do the hard work and you’d rather do anything else.

Procrastination is just one of the tools in his toolkit.

How to systematically beat Resistance

If there’s an antidote that can beat resistance, it’s focus. Focus is that mental state when you’re deep in the thick of it, when you’re finally doing that hard work.

For most, focus happens on accident. Resistance takes the day off and you can finally start doing your life’s work. But resistance will be back tomorrow.

But with the right recipe, anyone can remain hyperfocused. What if I told you that it’s possible to give resistance a huge wallop in the ass and find focus everyday. But Resistance is a persistent son-of-a-bitch— he’ll be back again tomorrow.

By the way, most people that drink cup after cup of coffee or take pop handfuls of adderall or modafinil— what they’re really chasing is focus.. using stimulants to beat down resistance.

Here’s how I do it

Like everyone else, I create a daily todo list. Part of my morning routine is the plan my entire day and spend one minute visualizing myself doing it.

Once I know what I want to do, e.g “Write blog post”, “Design my new website”, I write down in very non-ambigous terms what the success criteria is for these tasks.

So, if I was writing the success criteria for “write blog post”, I’d put down something like…

500 Words
Topic: How can you stay Hyperfocused?
Must be published and posted live
Share on Social Media
2-3 Bullet point outline/ideas for blog post

The trick is to very explicitly define exactly what success looks like. Make it very clear. Only write 450 words? Didn’t publish it? Nope— it’s not done.

So why does it this work? Because Resistance LOVES ambiguity.

Resistance is like the scary shadow on your bedroom wall.

When it’s dark and you can’t clearly see, your imagination runs wild. It fills in the blanks and assumes the worst. It’s only when you turn on the lights that you can see the truth.

Now put it into action

If you haven’t already made your daily todo list, make one right now
On a separate sheet of paper, jot down explicit “success criteria” for each task
Kick resistance in the ass and leave a reply letting me know how it went

P.S— You can read about my “Upgraded Todolist” in this blog post from a few months ago.

Build-your-own morning routine

2014-10-20T00:00:00Z

What if you could manufacture a perfect day? One of those ah-so-amazing days when you have the “productive touch” (similar to the midas touch but instead of turning things into gold, you open a can of todo-list destroying whoop-ass).

I’m having one of those days today. And what I’ve learned is— it’s no secret to make it happen. I can have one everyday.

What’s the big secret to an incredible day?

Well, I’ve written about it before and I’ll write about it again. It’s the morning routine. If you haven’t read my posts on my daily morning rituals, start there—

Crafting a morning routine is a personal thing. First of all, you can’t do everything. Morning routine implies morning— what I mean is, it shouldn’t consume your entire day. One hour is perfect, two is the maximum.

My (current) morning routine in a nutshell—

Wake up between 5-6AM
Drink a glass of water, first thing
Write 1 Journal Entry, 10 Ideas, and 250-1000 Words
Blue Light Therapy
Say my Daily Affirmations
Visualize my day
Run one mile
Take a cold shower
Plan my day ahead

Your morning routine should evolve and change. If something isn’t working, change it. Don’t latch on just because someone else is doing it.

The psychology of a morning routine

The morning routine sets the tone of your day. No matter how shitty yesterday was or how much you have to do today, the morning routine is your daily constant— your totally 100% selfish ritual. It’s the time that you allocate towards yourself, everyday, no matter what. It keeps you sane.

If you study successful people, one thing that you’ll notice really quickly is that they share a bunch of similar habits— and the daily ritual is one of them. This is why. And being busy isn’t an excuse. In fact, the busier that you get, the MORE you need it.

Build your own morning ritual

So, here’s how you get started— pick 4 habits and start them tomorrow. Yes, just 4. You can add more in later, but it’s best to start small. Pick the ones that resonate with you the most. Do them every morning immediately after you wake up for the next 30 days.

Pick 4 Morning Habits from the List

Wake up at 5AM
Drink a tall glass of water as soon as you get out of bed
Make your bed immediately
Do 20 pushups as soon as you get out of bed
Eat a protein and fat rich breakfast within 30 minutes of getting up
Run a mile every single morning
Take your multivitamins everyday
Floss after breakfast
Do Blue Light Therapy to wake yourself up
Take a bath in the morning
Take a cold shower in the morning (it sucks but you feel AWESOME after)
Write a blog post every single morning
Write down 10 ideas
Write a journal entry
Write 250-1000 words on any topic
Keep a daily gratitude journal
Plan your entire day in 15-60 minute increments
Lay out your clothes for the day
Dress your absolute best for the day (EVEN if you work from home)

Now, do them for the next 30 days

Every morning, when you wake up, your morning ritual should be the first thing you do. I used to have a big piece of paper taped to the wall that was the first thing I saw every morning. It said “Do your fucking ritual”. Let me know if you do this too because I think it’s awesome.

What if I forget to do it?

As soon as you remember, drop what you’re doing and start your ritual. You probably need something to remind you. Setting a second “morning ritual” alarm clock can help. If you remember when it’s too late (i.e, you’re in the car), do them when you get home.

What if I skip a day?

Add an extra day to the 30. For example, if you skip day 4, you have to keep up your ritual for 31 days instead of 30.

What if I want to do more than 4?

I recommend starting small for a couple of reasons— it’s easier to stick with AND you don’t want your time commitment to get huge. Remember, 1 to 2 hours MAX per day. This is especially important if you’re not used to waking up early.

Be superhuman without coffee or caffeine

2014-06-23T00:00:00Z

The average american drinks 3 cups of coffee per day. If you’re reading this, you’re probably not average, which means you likely drink EVEN more than that. I know the feeling— I can put down espresso shot after espresso shot with the best of ‘em.

And, for most, it’s not just coffee, but rather.. office coffee. Life’s too short to drink bad beer, bad coffee, and bad wine. But we’re addicts for that caffeine drip.

Over the years, I’ve collected a repertoire of eccentric beverages that I enjoy drinking instead of coffee. I go through cycles of giving up coffee, mainly because it’s such a potent stimulant. I don’t always do a great job of it (I fail my fair share), but I try to treat it like a tool.

Used occasionally (1-2 times biweekly), caffeine becomes an EXTREMELY potent stimulant. When you use it everyday, though, you just build a tolerance and addiction that really doesn’t serve any purpose.

Calling caffeine “baby cigarettes” might be a stretch, but that doesn’t mean it’s all roses— consistent high dose caffeine stresses the hell out of your Adrenal Gland.

Awesome alternatives to coffee

When I give up coffee, I still miss the occasional hot beverage throughout the morning. One of the more convenient aspects of a hot cup of black coffee is that there’s no calories involved— it’s basically a free drink. Remove it, and your list of calorie-free beverages drops by 25%.. Water, Tea, and Diet Soda (no thanks).

Here’s some AWESOME coffee replacements that I’ve collected over the years. I’ll cover each one— By the way, some of these still have caffeine but in FAR less quantities than a solid cup of black.

Matcha

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with this delicious green drink called Matcha. Matcha is made from green tea, but if you’ve never had Matcha before.. it’s NOTHING like green tea.

It’s super labor intensive to make— they cover the plants from direct sunlight to increase chlorophyll and aminos, dry it out for days, and grind it into a very fine powder.

You can mix Matcha powder with ice cold water (coldbrew matcha) to make a ridiculously refreshing, thirst-quenching, earthy drink. Or you, can mix it with hot water to make an espresso-like beverage with a superb crema.

Matcha is REALLY fucking expensive. It’s really labor intensive to produce and the harvest only happens once per year, so if you find cheap Matcha it’s probably incredibly bitter and not worth the consideration of your taste buds.

The best cheap Matcha that I’ve found is DoMatcha Organic. It’s good, but there are far better Matcha’s out there… if you’re willing to pay. At $278/100g, the “hyperpremium” Breakaway 100 ain’t cheap, but it’s worth every penny.

By the way, like most of the drinks here, there’s a whole ritual surrounding Matcha— it’s more than just pour and stir. There are bamboo scoops, special cups, and matcha whisks that can bring back the reminiscent ritual of making a cup of joe, depending on how far off the deep end you want to go :)

Yerba Mate

Before I was obsessed with Matcha, I was really into Mate. Yerba Mate is a tea made from leaves of a huge rainforest bush. It’s closer to coffee on the caffeine scale, so don’t go crazy with it, but actually has several stimulants that make it a smoother ride… less afternoon crash.

On top of caffeine, the stimulants theophylline and theobromine also come along for the ride.

Mate is smooth and sweet, enjoyed hot or cold (I like to brew it in the fridge overnight for maximum deliciousness). Don’t buy the crazy sweetened stuff at the store, brew it yourself. I’ve tried a bunch of the “mass produced” brands, and nothing even comes close to the Mate that Adagio sells. By the way, they also have toasted, chocolate, and citrus mate that’s tasty, too.

Again, there’s a whole ritual that goes along with brewing and drinking Mate. The classic way to drink Mate is hot, in a gourde, through a bombilla.

Good Tea (WTF is good tea anyways?)

Most people drink pretty crappy tea. Even the most snobbiest coffee drinker pulls out the cheap-o Lipton bags when they reach for tea. What gives? Lipton is like the Folgers of the tea world.

If you have a couple of bucks to spare, I recommend buying a few different tea samples and tasting them side-by-side. It’s eye opening how the flavors are so distinctly different between even the most similar types of tea. Not all black tea tastes the same, for example.

My favorite place to source good tea from is Adagio— I have no affiliation, just an extremely satisfied repeat customer. It’s hard to beat a solid black, green, or pu’erh tea.

Pu’erh, by the way, is a totally uncommon style of tea that’s become popular recently. It kind of tastes like a campfire.. it’s actually made by fermenting the tea with mold, yeast, and bacteria (sometimes for 20+ years!)

I highly highly highly recommend you just buy a ton of different samples and get a feel for what you like. Even if you stick with a single type of tea, like black tea, the variations between each type is CRAZY. Each one tastes so different.

Here are a couple of my favorite picks for teas—

Black Dragon Pearls (Just a solid black tea. Brews DEEP brown)
Yunnan Golden Curls (A delicious smokey black tea)
Fujian Jasmine Pearl (Sweet green tea with massive jasmine flavor)
Pu’erh Hazelberry (Smokey, tastes like liquified captain crunch berries)

Keeping with rituals, brewing tea the RIGHT way encompasses a bunch of rituals.. I made the investment in a temperature controlled tea kettle. It turns out that water temperature plays a huge role in making delicious tea.

Ever have super bitter green tea? You used the wrong temperature water. For me, this bad boy electric kettle does the job— no more bitter tea. It’s also a good idea to get good tea infuser. I like the super fine in-cup infuser like this one (but throw the lid away, it’s useless).

Teeccino and Dandy Blend (Herbal Coffee)

Teeccino and Dandy Blend are both more-or-less the same thing.. the basic idea is you take a bunch of flavorful roots and spices, seep them in hot water, and get a black-ish brew that’s sweet, nutty and reminiscent of a really smooth cup of coffee. I think they use chicory and dandelion root. Either way, it’s a really nice, smooth drink that’s totally caffeine free (unlike the small amounts of caffeine in the tea).

Teeccino isn’t gluten-free (there’s barley in the blend), so if that’s a deal-breaker for you go for the Dandy Blend. Otherwise, Teeccino tastes way better (just like every other gluten/gluten-free comparison, eh).

Also, Dandy Blend dissolves straight into hot water which makes it super convenient for the office. Teeccino has a seeping step like tea.. doesn’t take long, but less convenient for sure.

Kombucha

Kombucha is fermented brewed tea (unlike Pu’erh, the brewed tea is actually fermented). You take some black tea, throw in some sugar, and ferment it with a bunch of bacterias and yeasts. In the end, you get a delicious beverage filled with probiotics. Even though it sounds weird.. it has a very unique tangy, sweet, and vinegary taste.

Most mass-produced sweetened Kombucha has the nutritional content of a soda, so shop with eyes open. You can actually brew it at home pretty easily, similar to home brewing beer.

Become superhuman with Caffeine

I try to keep coffee (and the whole caffeine family) as a tool in my productivity toolbox. If I overuse it, I dramatically reduce the effects and it just becomes something that I’m addicted too— I end up drinking it because I’m constantly tired from abusing my adrenal glands.. I drink it to keep away the withdrawl headaches.

If you can give up on the daily coffee consumption, it unlocks a super power that you’ve never had before.. caffeine becomes SUPER effective.

Go a month without a cup of coffee and the stimulant effects become something like a dose of crystal meth. It’s becomes an instant-productivity elixir that’s just a drip machine away.

When I do drink coffee, I like to take it a couple of steps further. Instead of mixing in creamer or milk (thanks to a DNA test, I learned that dairy makes me.. flatulent), I actually blend grass-fed butter into my coffee similar to the “Bulletproof Coffee” guy, Dave Asprey. (I don’t like his beans though, I just use some nice locally roasted ones.)

Anyways, a nice serving of fat via the grass-fed butter with caffeine goes a long way to taking your caffeine experience to the next level.

Take a hunk of butter, throw it into a blender with a finely brewed cup of coffee and viola— you have something that’s reminiscent to a latte without the sugar or lactose. The high fat content helps sustain the caffeine wave.

Use it wisely young grasshoper, you’re playing with fire. Too frequent, and you’re back on the caffeine IV drip. Once or twice every two weeks and you can use its benefits as part of your own superhuman productivity arsenal.

Morning Rituals— The 3 T's of Success (3/3)

2014-06-02T00:00:00Z

This is the last post in my series about morning rituals. If you didn’t catch the other two, they’re here:

Today we’re going to talk about the 3 T’s of Success. The first two posts talk about things I do every morning to prepare myself for a productive day. Kind of like small appetizers before getting to the entree of the day.

This post is different. This is going to help you get more shit done.

The Upgraded Todolist

I’m the first to admit that todo lists suck. I’ve fought with GTD (great book, but the system has too much overhead) and pretty much every todo program in existence. Things, Omnifocus, The Hit List, Trello, Wunderlist— you name it, I’ve tried it.

For me, Software-based todo lists never work.

I end up spending a stupid amount of hours pulling in all of my tasks, customizing the software, only to forget about it a week later and completely drop the ball on my new “system”. It just doesn’t work for me. I know myself well enough to admit that I just can’t trust myself with software for managing my day. I like to play with the settings too much.

Over the past two years, I’ve found a system that actually works. It helps me to get more done and stay focused, but more importantly.. I actually stick to using it. That’s really the most important part of any system. You can have best program, system, or whatever.. but if you don’t actually USE IT, it doesn’t matter.

You’re going to laugh because it’s so simple… but…

First, I buy a bulk pack of REALLY high-quality legal pads on Amazon. Paper is the most expensive part of this system.. Well, maybe a nice pen too..

Every night, before bed, I sit down and plan my day. There are two important parts of this—

My list is a CONTRACT to myself. Everything on the todo list gets done that day, no exceptions. It’s a commitment, and it means to doing less.
My list encompasses the ENTIRE day. It’s the blueprint. When you’re designing the plans for a house, you don’t leave out the obvious parts like the bathroom and kitchen. Likewise, your list should include meetings, morning rituals, etc.

At the top of the notepad, I write the date. I split the page into 3 sections. On the far left, I write down all of the meetings I’ll have for that day.

In the middle, I put down everything I’d like to accomplish with a time estimate next to it. Anything that I estimate as more than 4 hours gets broken down— like me, you’re probably really bad at estimating.. break things down into small chunks. Remember, this is a CONTRACT. The time estimates help us to avoid overcommitting.

And lastly, on the far right, I put down the “obvious” things— morning routine stuff that I do everyday.. Journal, Lumosity, etc. Sure you could leave this off, but I’ve noticed that if I stop putting it on the list, I stop doing it consistently.

Okay, one more thing. Using the extra space on the bottom of the page, I add a distractions column. When you’re focused, working hard on something and a random thought bubbles up to the surface.. “hmm, I should research the best blah blah blah”.. you need to PAUSE.

Instead of acting on it and distracting yourself, quickly address it by just writing it down on your notepad. Not only will you prevent yourself from getting distracted and falling into a rabbit hole (and somehow find yourself reading wikipedia 5 hours later), you’ll also save the idea for later. Since you’re addressing the distraction immediately, it’ll stop bubbling up into your conscious mind so you can FOCUS on your work.

Time Blocking

The upgraded todo list helps us plan and organize our day, but it doesn’t actually help us to GET MORE THINGS DONE. Here’s a really simple tactic I use to actually accomplish more. It’s kind of like the pomodoro technique, but slightly modified. There are a billion pomodoro apps, but I really like physical things. Apps are just too easy to forget about.

I use this really simple Miracle Cube timer that I picked up on Amazon. I set it for 45 minutes and get laser sharp focus on a single task. Multitasking is great way to be awful at a bunch of things. We use time blocking to AVOID multitasking. Yes, do whatever it takes to only focus on ONE thing.

When a thought pops into your head, write it down in your “distractions” box. Resist the temptation to context switch. It’s really hard at first.. computers have trained our minds to jump around like crazy.

Usually, I’ll take a 5-10 minute break between each 45 minute session, followed by a longer 30 minute break after two 45 minute sessions. You need to manage your energy and slowly release it throughout the day instead of flooring the pedal and running out of gas.

Sunday is like my holy day for focusing. Instead of taking a lazy day or watching Netflix all day, I like to set aside a 4 hour time block to focus on something big. This is your time. It’s the opportunity to conquer (or atleast start) those really high value things you always procrastinate on.

Today (aka Start now)

One thing I struggle with the most is starting big projects. Like, even though I might be really pumped up about the project, I’ll catch myself procrastinating like crazy on actually starting. I’ll spend a ton of time researching and learning about the BEST way to do it, but I won’t actually start.

I end up so paralyzed by the fear that the project won’t come out perfect, that I never actually start. It’s a cycle of perfection and resistance.

Perfection is just another form of procrastination. It’s an excuse to delay starting something important. The fear of not doing it right PERFECTLY the first time scares the ever living shit out of you, and you never get started.

Millions of people have great worked trapped inside of them because of perfection.

Here’s the thing about perfection— it’s easy to defeat. All you need to do is START. Once you make EVEN JUST A TINY BIT OF PROGRESS, the fear goes away. It doesn’t hold any power over you anymore.

I’ve battled perfection and I’ve won. Here’s how I do it. Again, dead simple, but worth putting into words. I take my Cube Timer that I mentioned above and I set it for 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, I start “that project”. It doesn’t matter what I do in that 10 minutes, as long as I start. No researching, no googling, no reading up on the best way.. Just start. If it’s a painting, put paint on the canvas. If it’s programming, get some code onto GitHub.

When the timer goes off after 10 minutes, you’re free to stop. You’ve battled perfection and won. Remember, a masterpiece is made up of a million tiny mistakes.

Morning Rituals— Mind Games (2/3)

2014-05-29T00:00:00Z

This is part two of my series on Morning Rituals. You can read part one by clicking here.

Every morning that I’m alive, I finish my Morning Success Ritual.

It’s the most valuable thing that I do every single day, day in and day out. Throughout this series of blog posts, I’m going to lead you by example on building your own kickass morning ritual.

I’ve done my morning ritual in one form or another for a couple of years now. It’s constantly evolving— this morning’s ritual isn’t the same one I did a year ago, and next month’s ritual will be different from the one I do today. I’m constantly learning, optimizing, and tweaking the best way for me to start each morning with some oomph.

In the last post, I talked about how I stretch my creativity muscles with the 1/10/1000 exercise. There are some other muscles in your brain that need to get worked out too— just like you don’t only do bicep curls when you’re at the gym, you need to work other muscles besides your creativity muscle.

Mind contro.. err.. Mind Games

What we want to do is play with the neuroplasticity of our brain— the idea that our brain is more than just a warm lump of putty.. that it’s actively engaged and changing during our lifetime. It turns out (based on current understandings), that we can actually influence the memory, problem solving, and speed of our mind.. Kind of like upgrading the CPU.

The easiest way that you can do this is by training daily with a “dual n-back game”. You can find a ton of them online, my favorite is the (free) Brain Workshop app that works on Windows/Mac/Linux.

BUT, really, my absolute favorite way to workout my mind is by doing a daily practice of Lumosity (no affiliation) every morning. I do 5 different brain games every morning and, over time, I’ve seen my memory and problem solving skills really increase. It has made a noticeable difference in my life. I notice when I’ve skipped Lumosity for a few days because my memory isn’t quite as sharp.

I’ve done Lumosity for around 425 days now. They actually have a really neat tool to track your progress and graph the changes over time. While the critic in me says this only shows that you’re getting better at the games, not improving your memory, I’ve personally noticed a dramatic improvement.

I used to have the worst short term memory. I’d constantly forget things, miss deadlines.. just because it’d fall out of my mind. While I still forget things (I’m not superhuman.. yet), I’ve improved so much since starting Lumosity.

Daily Time Commitment: 10 minutes

Command your subconscious

Affirmations. It’s such a loaded term. When most people hear it, they run for the hills. They think of some new-agey bullshit like “The Secret” (I won’t waste your time with a link— it’s that bad), where you “command” the universe to give you what you want by thinking about it, and you just get it free of charge. “Checks just start appearing in the mail”.

If you think that form of affirmations is bullshit, you’re right. Of course it is.

What affirmations REALLY are, though, is a tool to reinforce your subconscious with positive, constructive daily advice. Think of it as.. the self-talk that you -want- to have.

I’ve studied a bunch of successful people and I’ve noticed a common theme.. people that’ve had a “rags to riches” type of story almost always talk about daily affirmations.

So why do most people squirm like a caterpillar (I did the first 1000 times) when we talk about affirmations? I think it just seems weird.

That’s probably because it is. It’s super fucking weird.

But most incredibly successful people ARE weirdos. Do you think Bill Gates isn’t a weirdo? I’m sure he is! And that makes him incredibly successful, because he doesn’t think or act like everyone else. He’s unique.

Stop being just average and give it a shot.

Affirmations are super easy. Spend a few minutes writing out the self-talk of your “ideal” or “future”-self. Every morning, read them to yourself out loud. With passion. Don’t just skim them. Announce them.

I’m going to totally embarrass myself, for your benefit, here are my REAL daily affirmations. I say these every morning.

I am a finisher. I am a person that gets everything done, no exceptions all of the time. I am fast. I am productive, I find the most efficient and simple way to conquer anything that I put my head to.

I’m insightful. I make connections and create thoughts that bring simplicity and understanding to those around me.

Money is not my priority in life, but I enjoy the spoils of my success.

I’m successful. There isn’t anything that I put my mind to and don’t find success in. While it doesn’t come easy, it comes naturally. Things often go the way I plan because I steer the motherfucking ship.
Yes it feels fucking weird, but that doesn’t make it less awesome.

Daily Time Commitment: 1 minute

Visualize Awesome

The last exercise is easy.. it just takes a minute. Read through your todo list and turn it a movie. Close your eyes and visualize yourself doing each item, one by one. See yourself doing exactly what you have to do, as specifically as possible.. Sitting with your laptop at your desk. Chrome is open.. WordPress is loaded, and you’re writing a blog post.

Once you visualize what you plan on doing, you’ve kind of “already did it”. It removes that little bit of resistance that makes you afraid of starting.

Daily Time Commitment: 1 minute

Good luck! Add Lumosity, Affirmations, and Visualizations to your daily routine. I’ve got more coming :-)

P.S. What’s the biggest thing holding you back from doing your morning rituals? Not enough time? Does it just feel.. weird? Comment below.

Morning Rituals— 1/10/1000

2014-05-25T00:00:00Z

I recently asked a friend—

“What’s the most important thing you do everyday?”
blank stare
“I.. I don’t have any idea”

This was POWERFUL, because I knew exactly what the most valuable thing that I do every single day is—

It’s my morning ritual, my daily success routine.

WTF is a “Morning Ritual?”

Over the years, I’ve come up with about 10 or 15 things that I do every single day, habits that I’ve noticed multiply my success and creativity.

I first got this idea from Eben Pagan and Hal Elrod’s book, The Miracle Morning.

I used to wake up and immediately dive into my work. Maybe I’d have breakfast first, but usually not. I’d lay in bed for 30 minutes reading email as soon as my eyes opened and eventually make it to my computer to start hacking away on projects.

I read an article in Fast Company that profiled the “typical day” of a few high-profile business executives. One of the questions asked was— what’s the last thing you do before falling asleep and the first thing you do before waking up?

I’ll spare you a link to the article because the answers were almost universal…

CHECK MY EMAIL

What the hell. That’s a ridiculous way to start a day if you want to be productive. I’m totally guilty too, but just think how ridiculous it sounds..

I want to have a productive day, so I’m going to start by seeing what tasks others have deferred to me.

No thanks. We need to take back our day and start with something better.

1/10/1000 Morning Ritual

Instead of overwhelming you with all of the rituals I’ve amassed over the past year or two, I’m going to share them over a couple of posts. The ritual I’m sharing today is by far my favorite and the most valuable.

1 Journal Entry
10 Ideas
1000 Words

Keeping a Journal

I’ve talked about how I’ve written in my journal everyday for the past 1810 days. Besides breathing, journaling is my longest running habit and has been the cornerstone of consistency in my otherwise “by-the-seat-of-pants lifestyle”.

Every morning when I wake up, one of the first things I do is write a quick entry in my journal. I use DayOne to keep my journal, but used Evernote for the first 860 days. The software that you use makes no difference as long as you just start the damn habit.

By the way, the journal entries that I write are usually pretty short. Something like 4-6 sentences talking about major highlights from the past day. If I want to write more, I do, but don’t force myself to write a certain amount. Once and awhile I’ll write a longer form entry, but usually they’re pretty short — but VERY valuable. Having an archive of your life that you can look back on is incredible.

Write down 10 ideas

This is a “jedi master” habit that I picked up from James Altucher (How to become an idea machine). I have a dedicated idea notebook that I keep on my desk. Every morning I pick a topic and throw down a handful of ideas.

Most of my ideas are shit, but it doesn’t matter— it’s like doing deadlifts with your mind. The point is to work out your idea muscle and make it stronger, to loosen up your creativity for the rest of the day.

It sounds easy but it’s actually pretty hard to come up with 10 less-than-awful ideas when you limit yourself to a single subject. Once and awhile you come up with a good one. It’s actually how I came up with doing Office Hours, which has added a ton of value to peoples lives.

You already have a ton of awesome ideas kicking around in your head, you just need to find ‘em.

If you’re the type of person that says, “Oh, I’m just not the creative type”… you really need this. Your idea muscle is weak.

Write 1000 Words

I’ll be upfront.. this is the hardest one to do. But it’s so fucking worth it.

I open up my favorite writing app, Ulysses, and crank out 1000 words every morning. The topic doesn’t matter. I’ve written everything from serious blog posts to short stories about my cat. I usually don’t have a planned topic and 90% of the writing never makes it anywhere. You can even write a rap if you want.

Doing something with what you write isn’t the point.

I used to be scared of writing, even after having a bunch of successful articles. I’d feel a TON of resistance before writing because there was so much pressure to make every article a grand slam. So I’d hardly ever write. Fear won.

Turning Pro taught me about being “a professional”, about practicing and consistently honing your craft. Think of your daily writing ritual as practice. It’s your warmup for the day and relieves some of the pressure.

What you’re training yourself to do is to write so much that it becomes EASY.. natural. It’s just something you do. What I notice is that it’s way easier for me to write high quality content after I get those first 1000 words out of the way. It’s like you’re clearing out all of the cobwebs and junk so that the good stuff can flow.

How do I actually do this?

Step 1: Get out of bed early
Step 2: Drink a tall glass of water
Step 3: Do 1/10/1000

I’ll share 10 other morning rituals with you over the coming days, but for now, this is all that you need to get started with a kick ass morning.

Don’t check email until you’re done, damnit! Put your own success first.

PS— Wake up early. Winners don’t get up at 11am. This is coming from the biggest night owl, the guy that loves staying up til 4am. I win disproportionately more when I’m up at 5am. I’ll share more techniques on becoming an early riser in a future post.

I’m giving away $3,000,000 this year

2014-05-19T00:00:00Z

I’m a hardcore believer in New Year’s Resolutions. I’m talking super complex, month-by-month lists and goals that I spend nearly half of December planning.

Today, I want to share one my loftiest resolutions from 2014— to give away $3,000,000 in value.

I know what you’re thinking.. impossible! Unless you just happen to have a cool 3 million in cash laying around (and I don’t).

Instead, I’m giving away $3,000,000 in value.

What is value?

A major shortcut to success is to constantly create value for other people— to create something valuable. Something that’s worthy of time, consideration, and (sometimes) money. I find that the more valuable things that I create, the more successful I end up, whether or not I directly charge money for what I’m making.

One fatal flaw that new “producers” make is that they demand to be paid for all of their work, upfront, starting from day one. While working for free and being taken advantage of sucks, strategic investments and giving away value for free are real things. Sometimes you need to make the first move in a negotiation, give away something-for-nothing in order to reach an audience.

Look at “How my opinion made it into the New York Times” today by Jason Fried— Jason lists 10 years worth of steps, connections, and meetings that got his opinion into the paper. It’s the connections he made over the years that got him on the front page; the free advice, lunches, and coffees.

“Fuck you, pay me” only works to a point. Quality content is valuable and you absolutely should charge for it, but you don’t need to charge for everything. Philanthropy is real and doesn’t only need to be limited to the rich and famous. There are so many ways to give.

How I’ve given away $750,000 so far—

I’m lucky enough to have a blog that a fair amount of people read. Every time that I write a post that touches someone, it’s a tiny bit of value.

Here’s a few of the things I’ve done to hit the $750K mark—

Lots of talks! Sharing my startup experiences (for free) gives everyone in the room something enjoyable
DonorsChoose, Omakase Charity, YouCaring (more traditional giving)
Mentoring students at Uncollege; I dropped out of college and am grateful to give the advice that 19-year old me needed to hear
Hosting free, weekly office hours sessions on Mondays at 7AM PST. One-on-one value.
Writing super high quality email newsletters (totally free; no sales pitch)

How you can give away value

Start producing more creative work. Create value by making art, by writing, by creating open-source code. And then give it away for free. You’ll touch someone. You’ll improve your community. And (somewhat selfishly), you’ll see it repaid to you in the long run. Who knows, it might even get you into the New York Times.

I need your help!

There’s two things you can do to help me give away $3,000,000 this year—

Leave a comment below and let me know what topics I can write about to help YOU personally succeed.
Join me for free office hours every Monday at 7AM PST. Learn more here.

Why I gave away all of my books (for free)

2014-03-26T00:00:00Z

Who’s not a sucker for a good paperback? Over the past 5 years I’ve morphed from a self-proclaimed non-reader to an avid doggy-eared paperback collector.

I’ve never been able to adopt the ebook, even though I’m a first adopter for even the most ridiculous things (i.e, Soylent— need I say more?)

I can’t get over the fact that paperbacks just… feel good. They smell nice. They have a sound, a weight, a body. It gets more awkward. I’ve WRITTEN an ebook. And I don’t read ebooks. Yup.

I didn’t have a choice anymore

I’m swapping coasts, moving to San Francisco, and from what I’ve heard I’ll have a tough time fitting a book collection inside of a shoebox in SOMA. Tough break.

But my books.. they’re mine. To look at man’s book collection is to take a peek at his psyche. You see the stories and knowledge that has shaped his mind.

How do you get rid of your most prized possessions?

The first concession— “I want them to go to good homes”. Like, I want people to actually read them. To see what I saw. To find value in the words that I’ve gotten so much out of.

But how? Do I give them away? To friends? Do I just cram them into a box and drop them off at Goodwill?

What if I could share them with people I’ve never met?

An unrealistic idea quickly took shape into something real. That’s it! I’ll give the books away for free to strangers on the internet who WANT them. An experiment.

And just like that, bookshare.io was born.

Launching bookshare.io

I built bookshare.io in about a week. The premise was simple. I’d list all of my 130+ books (yes, I’ve read each one, cover-to-cover). Anyone can pick up to five books, pay about $8 for flat-rate shipping and get them for free.

I avoided any “manual labor”, like having to type in every book title and description, by building (my first) iPhone app to scan the ISBN barcodes and download the title, description, and cover art from Amazon and Google Books.

I launched the site on 3/25 at 11PM, and by morning all but the last 21 books were spoken for.

The reception was incredible— I collected over $500 in shipping fees and optional donations within the first 3 hours of launch. About 50% of people claiming books chose to donate an extra $3 to pay for the hosting costs (like Heroku, Namecheap, and CloudFlare).

But, more importantly, all of my books will go to good homes.

P.S— Want the nitty gritty details on exactly what tech I used to launch the bookshare? Read the in-depth post here.

I stopped relying on motivation and took control of my creativity

2014-02-13T00:00:00Z

Life, if well lived, is long enough — Seneca

Fuck motivation. I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor for seven months, trying to write the perfect blog post. 237 mornings, I’ve scribbled “write a blog post” on my thin, yellow legal pad hoping motivation would visit just one more time.

I was scared of writing a shitty post.

So I told myself I was busy. Didn’t have the time. Had a couple of ideas in the air. I’d get to it to it when I was motivated.

We all share a dirty secret.

Anyone who’s ever said they’ve “been too busy” is a liar. They’ve been too scared. Including you. Especially you.

Life is long enough. We say it’s short because we never make the time to live.

Being busy is a pleasant way of saying that.

Motivation is an excuse to do great things without promising to be great in the future.

It’s like, you look at the clock and realize the day is gone. It’s 8PM and sure, you did stuff, but you’re not quite sure what and AT BEST it wasn’t even important.

If you rely on motivation to accomplish dreams, you spend most of your time waiting.

Another day driven through on cruise-control. You look around and think— “I am the only one? Am I the only person on EARTH that’s been left out of some secret? How does everyone else have it figured out?”

I’ve spent 77% of my life in school, yet I was never taught how to do taxes or systematically find focus.

We learn how to solve math problems, but we never learn how to program our minds and cling to motivation as the answer.

I lost 10 pounds in January. It’s not the first time I’ve had to do it. I’ve failed over and over again. “I’m not MOTIVATED enough. I wish I had the DISCIPLINE I used to have”.

The excuse is a lie, because the formula is always the same. Throw away junk food, exercise more, eat less carbs. The rest works itself out.

But without a system, relying on motivation alone, you’re fucked.

How I systematically win a tiny bit everyday

It’s not sexy to say, but most greatness is planned. Calculated. Worked out chunk by chunk. Created in the absence of motivation. It arrives slowly and without gusto.

Throw away motivation. Harness a system, a morning routine, a ritual.

Here’s mine:

Wake up, immediately drink glass of water
Write a quick journal entry, practice Lumosity
Yoga, meditate, watch a TED talk
Write down 10 ideas to keep my idea muscle strong
Plan out, step-by-step, the 3 most high value things I can accomplish today. Low value work gets brushed off onto a todo later list. (I’m a fan of these legal pads)
Use the most badass uber-simple timer to work in 45 minute chunks with 20 minute breaks in between (renewal is important).

You can copy mine or make your own. Just stop relying on motivation.

P.S— you can print out this post and rip it up if it’s shitty

Lessons learnt crashing a hang glider

2013-06-21T00:00:00Z

When I was 21, I crashed my hang glider. I was taking hang gliding lessons from an 85-year old German immigrant named Henry, and during a training flight I plummeted out of the sky and crashed in the woods.

After the initial HOLY FUCK I JUST CRASHED AND I’M NOT SURE IF I’M ALIVE shock and the quick pat-down check to make sure my limbs were still on, my face turned rosy red and filled with embarrassment. I didn’t die, but I wished I had. I had just failed in the most spectacular, crash-the-car-going-100mph kind of way in front of my friends, and worse, Henry.

Everyone wanted to know what happened. Was my glider faulty? Sudden change of wind? No, none of those things. It was all my fault. I was going too slow. I stalled. I lost control.

It’s all my fault

Failure feels incredibly wrong. In nature, when you fail— you die. Luckily, we don’t die when we fail at startups, but it still feels a little bit like dying. I can come up with every excuse why I’ve failed, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all my fault.

It’s MY fault for getting scammed out of $6000 on Flippa. I should have Googled the seller.
It’s MY fault for hiring the shoddy iOS developer. I should have asked for a code sample.
It’s MY fault for the site going down at 2AM. I should have fixed that bug weeks ago.

When you accept the blame, failure is easy. You aren’t left with excuses, anger, and questions— the feelings are simple and the answer is obvious. It was all my fault.

You can’t blame anyone but yourself, and how can you possibly hold a grudge at you? It’s easier to forgive yourself than it is to forgive others. When you take responsibility for all of the outcomes, only then can you also take responsibility for your success. Otherwise, it’s just dumb luck.

How to fail at startups, crash course

Make interesting shit
Find out people don’t want to pay for the shit you think is interesting
See 1

The dumbest website I’ve ever created has to be “Swine Flu Email Alerts”. No one ever bought the “flu dominator” hospital masks I was selling.

Or maybe the dumbest was “Send It Fake”, a site for sending emails from fake From addresses. Not only did this awful idea make me a prime gateway for spammers and scammers, but it also got STOLEN from me when a guy from India hacked into my GoDaddy account and transferred the domain to his account. I sent him the rest of the files— if he wanted it that bad, he could just have it.

As entrepreneurs, we’re going to fail. It’s just part of the equation. But when you fail, do it in the most spectacular, hair on fire, blaze of glory kind of way.

I crashed my glider because I was flying too slow and stalled the wing. Although extremely counterintuitive (and pants-poopingly scary when faced with complete loss of control while flying engineless), the way to correct for a stall is to dramatically increase airspeed by dropping into a dive. Maybe this is how we should correct failure, too.

After my crash, I found out that during the descent into the trees, Henry was yelling at me from the ground in his thick German accent:

“GO FASTER. GO FASTER. PULL IN.”

I’ll defer to his advice— when it looks like you’re on a collision course with failure, speed up. Go faster. Pull in.

This was an article I wrote for TechCocktail “#FailureFriday” Series, “Accepting blame and going down in flames”

Life360: The biggest platform that you haven’t heard about (yet)

2013-06-03T00:00:00Z

I’m obsessed with connection. I crave sets of things. Why do we love Apple products? It runs deeper than just the user experience of a single device— it’s the experience of the entire ecosystem. I love things that just.. match. Fit together like puzzle pieces. Like, I have this weird obsession for IKEA. Not because IKEA furniture is the highest quality or the best (it’s not), but because IKEA has mastered the art of the set. Connected. Matching. I obsess over it.

But computers are still figuring it out. Technology and data still seem to have a hard time.. talking— and that’s frustrating to me, because I believe that there is an incredibly futuristic shift that happens at the intersection of the two. We’ve just touched the tip of the connected home, the connected person— Look at Nest, Wattvision, and Lockitron. This is the technology I grew up dreaming about.

The “Nest for XYZ” rush is just around the corner— alarm systems, light controls, fitness equipment, are just a few I can come up with off the top of my head, but the horizon of possibilities is seemingly infinite.

But, even with these awesome devices, none of the technology is truly interconnected. Each device, each set of data, lives in its own independent, segregated ecosystem. Another service to remember. Another account to add my girlfriend/wife/parents/kid to. It’s like playing Marco Polo all by yourself.

There is power in the interconnection, power in correlating seemingly unrelated pieces of data, power in the platform. I’m pretty interested in Nootropics and general self-tracking, but manually logging every input into your life is tedious and unrealistic, not to mention frustrating when it’s already being passively tracked by many of the devices I’m using every single day. What if Nest or FitBit or Google Latitude or Journal or RunKeeper or my car could talk to each other and share data that’s otherwise locked up?

I’ve kept a journal for the past 1400 days and track my cognition daily on Lumosity, just two independent areas where I collect data about my life, but there’s real power in being able to correlate them together. Like, on days when I log a higher mood in my Journal, my cognitive scores on Lumosity tend to be higher. Or, on the flip side, nights when I spend too many hours at the bar, my Lumosity scores plummet and take almost 4 days to recover to normal levels.

But accessing and correlating these two independent sources of data is a real hassle— often times, requiring manually shuffling data around.

Above you’ll see two massive sources of automatic data that’s passively collected about me— almost 3 years of location history and 214 days of cognitive performance history. This is POWERFUL data. But the two can’t hook up with each other and make sweet, sweet data babies. Like, my best day of cognitive ability was on April 30, 2013. Why? Where was I? What was my mood like? What was I doing? Did I go out the night before? The data exists, but the interconnection doesn’t.

Enter Life360

So, the more I think about it, the more I see a pattern emerge. There needs to be a platform for the connected devices and apps that find their way into my life, and I think that platform starts with an app called Life360. Life360 is an app for keeping families connected using location sharing, but where some only see “just an app for moms”, I see family graph. Remember, just a few years ago, Facebook was “just for posting drunk college party pics”. Meanwhile, in 2013, my 81 year old grandfather is using Facebook to keep up in touch with me, 900 miles away.

It makes sense that the platform for the future of interconnectivity would be built primarily around the family— The people I share with most frequently are my girlfriend, my dad, my mom, and probably my cat. My close family. These are the people that I want to be able to access my thermostat, deactivate my alarm, see my location when I’m driving. The people I constantly want to connect with.

And the family graph already has some teeth, too— 38 million users and hundreds of millions of locations per day. Next, it just needs to become a platform.

Interconnection is my obsession. That’s why I’m getting involved. I’ve built an API or two, and know the foundation for building an amazing platform, for building the platform that I’ve dreamt about. The puzzle pieces are spread out across the table and just need to be put into place.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Inspiration is procrastination’s cousin

2013-02-04T00:00:00Z

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

I used to wait for inspiration. But inspiration is always late. Sitting nervously, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Is it here yet? No, I don’t think so. I’ll just wait a little bit longer.

Inspiration is made up. It’s a self-defeating act of resistance, holding us back from success. From being a creator. Write a blog post without inspiration? Hah. A painting? No, no. Once I’m inspired, I’ll do it right away.

Inspiration is procrastination in a bad disguise. The dream of being great. It’s a taste of success. And it leaves you wanting more. Craving the next short-lived visit. It keeps you believing, riding the procrastination train.

Make your own damn inspiration

I’m tired of being stood up. I’ve been waiting for weeks and inspiration isn’t showing up. And to break free? I just need to stop believing the lie. It’s in my head. Made up. Success handcuffs.

Wanna know how to make your inspiration? Start working on that thing. Even when you don’t want to. Everyday. Even when you’re scared of it. Seriously. Stop what you’re doing right now. Do your life’s work.

Inspiration doesn’t exist; only true work, grinding away, is real.

Distraction is a 4 letter word

2013-01-27T00:00:00Z

Ever burn an entire day knowing exactly what you need to do but just not doing it? Because you can’t seem to get traction- spinning your wheels, searching for focus?

Distraction and Focus are the ying and yang of my life. I don’t mean low-level “my coworker coughs too loud” distraction. Not that. High level, head in the clouds, foggy… just… feel like I’m sleep walking kind of distraction.

And it comes in ebbs and flows. True focus is like a drug- weeks of kicking ass, feeling like I’m on top of the world, really making progress towards what’s most important, followed by withdrawal and what feels like eternity stuck inside of a rut of inaction and paralysis.

What I do when I feel like a loser

Being distracted makes me feel like a loser. Like I’m wasting my life, not creating value.

I whip out a sheet of paper and plan out my day in 30 minute blocks.

Yes this is tedious. Yes it works.

Easy wins. Think of it as the most gratifying todo-list in the world- never before would things like eat breakfast and take shower warrant their own checkbox.

Next, I work on creating something for me.

Write, make art, code, build something, whatever.

The feeling of creating is so powerful, so gratifying, that it’s exactly the ammo I need to defeat distraction. It creates momentum in me to do something great.

Doing “work” for your job doesn’t count. That’s bullshit work, not creating, making dollars for someone else.

It just takes a small win

I’ve been stuck this entire month, trying to escape from inaction. I haven’t done anything worth talking about- not an ounce of progress made. Afraid to do something. Mad at myself for doing nothing.

It starts with a small, single win. All you need is one- and it can be tiny. But they build on top of one another and eventually you create enough escape velocity to break out of the cycle and find focus.*

Tonight I worked on an oil painting. It’s not a big deal- an inconsequential event in my day. But it was exactly the small win I needed, the first domino for the inspiration I needed to write this post. And this post will inspire what I create next.

Everything you’ve done inspires now, and now will inspire your future.

*If you’re interested in tiny wins and tiny habits, I highly recommend the Tiny Habits course by BJ Fogg.

Electric Toothbrush

2012-12-16T00:00:00Z

Monday morning, May 2009. I spent 2 weeks in Italy after turning 22 and was back in the office for the first time, catching up on boatloads of email.

“Hey Steve, can you come into my office for a second.”

“Actually.. close the door behind you.”

Close the door! Man! Must be time for that raise- I’d been waiting! All of those 70 hour weeks. Weekends and Holidays. It’s all about to pay off now. I had my eye one of those crazy expensive electric toothbrushes.

“So, this is going to be tough, but…”

I stopped listening. My next memory is driving home from work at 11AM, screaming. Everyone else got let go, except one guy- our worst programmer*. No matter how good you are, how much effort you put in, everyone eventually gets cut from the team.

My entire LIFE was my job. I was so proud of it. My title! And I worked my ass off. How could they do this to me? It defined me. It was me.

The first thing I did when I got home was order that $170 electric toothbrush on Amazon. Even though I was broke. Jobless. It didn’t matter, because I took the power back- I gave myself a raise.

My self-worth was my job

My self-esteem was wrecked. I didn’t do much beside sleep for days. Let’s be honest, people lose their jobs everyday! It’s a pretty common thing. So, why did it suck so much?

Why should ANYONE besides ME have complete control over my self-esteem, my happiness? It’s stupid. And it’s a mistake of convenience. It’s so much easier to give away your power, tie your worth to some external thing, instead of creating it within. Laziness. I was too lazy to take control of my own happiness, to make it myself.

Stop giving your power away. It’s for you. Not for your job. Not for your girlfriend. Not for anyone, besides you.

I’ve seen friends make the same mistake. Lose their jobs. Laid off. And they struggle for months. Not because of money, it’s deeper than that- because their self-esteem got hit by a train.

Looking back? I wish I got fired sooner.

The lesson was worth the pain. The good ones always are.

*We ran a LAMP stack. He wanted to rewrite Memcache in C# because it “wasn’t fast enough”.

Ideas have a 2 week shelf life

2012-11-02T00:00:00Z

I have a new rule that I’m making for myself and holding others to.

If you haven’t worked on something in the past two weeks, you’re not allowed to talk about it.

Idea rot

I’m guilty. But not as much, anymore. My ideas would just sit for months. Stagnating. Ideas rot, and the only way to keep them from spoiling is to turn them into reality.

And I’m not the only one guilty of wasting ideas. I’ve heard about the same projects that y’all were going to start working on “this weekend” for the past 6 months. Stuck on repeat.

When all you do is talk, you forget the most critical step- making. I’m not saying skip researching your ideas, but less-is-more. You don’t need to be an expert to solve a problem and it doesn’t need to be perfect the first time. Cut before your measure.

How to bring an idea to life today

Block off a chunk of time. 6 is good, 12 is better.

This is seriously the hardest part, even though it seems like the easiest. It’s hard to find 6-12 hours of continuous, distraction free time. I love Sunday for this.

No one sees me on Sundays because I cut myself off from the world and spend the entire day creating. I get extreme. No distractions. Not even cooking. I only eat light food, all of it’s pre-cooked or raw. No friends, no phone, no twitter.

Outline. You have 2 minutes. Go.

I learned this technique while writing a book, but it works for everything. Get a pen and paper. Break your project into steps. Even if it sounds stupid, even if the step is “go to the store and buy a pencil”, write out as many actionable steps as you can in 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, stop. You now have your plan.

The time limit is key. It’s a race to get as much on paper as you can, but it’s fluid and doesn’t need to be perfect.

This is a NO GOOGLING zone.

When you’re creating, Google is off limits, unless you’re looking up how to do something very specific that you’re working on right now. Like, “syntax for creating Rails associations” is fine but “best practices for building a Rails application” is not. If you can’t hold yourself to this, block Google.

I like to write down anything that distracts me- google searches, random thoughts, new ideas, whatever. The point is, if you write them down, they’ll stop bubbling up when you’re in the zone.

The easy part, creating

When you set yourself up for success, creating, doing something actionable, is the easiest part. I know that when I follow this process, I get into that mind-numbing state where I just flow. It’s like all of my energy and focus just pour into whatever I’m working on (it’s how I feel right now, writing this post).

Update that blog you’ve been ignoring for the past 6 months.
Start coding that side-project, you can build a MVP in 36 hours.
Outline that book you’ve wanted to write for years, it only takes 15m.

No one will notice if you don’t, but someone might notice if you do.

How I automated the boring parts of life

2012-10-23T00:00:00Z

I have a bad habit: waiting until the last minute to do things. Like, last month I had to fly to New York to run a 193 mile relay race. I knew about the trip for almost 6 months, but didn’t buy plane tickets until 3 days before, at 4x the cost. True dedication to the art of procrastination. You can call me somewhat of an expert, and it’s one of my biggest shortcomings.

It’s not because I’m lazy- in fact, the exact opposite is true. I’m incredibly productive. I move fast, but I single task. I don’t bounce around with a million things at once because of the incredible cost of context switching. Spending time planning trips, picking flights, and buying tickets just doesn’t really seem important to me until it’s 3 days away.

Paying $700 bucks for plane tickets, though, when they should have cost $200, isn’t the best move- so I’ve spent the past month trying to get a handle on my procrastination.

Fixing procrastination without willpower

Self-discipline and Willpower. Two words that aren’t the solution. You only have a fixed amount of self-discipline and after it’s been used up, you need to wait for it to recharge. If you “fix” a personality defect by brute-forcing with self-discipline, you’ll be back in the same boat a week later.

I broke the cycle of procrastination and willpower exhaustion by automating the things I was putting off. Yup, I threw money at the problem, and it was cheaper than you think.

Get a personal assistant

Hold off your judgement for a second. I’m still new to the assistant thing, but it easily falls into the 10 most effective life changes I’ve ever made. Within the first 24 hours of having an assistant, I delegated 2 tasks that had been marinating in my todo list for months. You know, the thing you say you’re going to finally get done every time Monday rolls around? Well last Monday, it finally got done all I had to do was send an email. Mind blowing.

Total cost? $25 DOLLARS A MONTH. The service I use is FancyHands and it paid for itself on the first day.

Think it’s ridiculous? So did I, but it ended up changing my entire workflow. Like, I just had them book an AirBnB place for a trip next month. Next month! This is coming from a guy that was buying plane tickets days before a trip.

If it doesn’t end up being useful you can just have your assistant email me about how much I suck. Might as well get your monies worth.

Amazon Subscribe & Save and Emergency Deodorant

Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but Amazon lets you setup reoccurring orders that get shipped automatically. It takes like 5 minutes to setup and has saved me so much frustration. I used to be the guy running to Target on the way out to buy a little thing I like to call “emergency deodorant”. I’ve found myself standing in the deodorant aisle nonchalantly applying some Old Spice before taking it up to the register more times than I can count.

It was surprisingly hard to come up with ideas for using Subscribe and Save, so if you need some inspiration, check out the list of things Amazon automatically sends me. Fair warning: It’s hilarious to open your door to a UPS guy carrying a 40-pack of toilet paper, IN THE ORIGINAL PACKAGING.

Automate the things you hate

Even though I really enjoy writing, I despise proofreading and editing. Like to the point where I rather just not write at all so I don’t have to deal with the proofreading part. Nothing kills my flow more than having to re-read what I just wrote 1000 times.

Even though the book I’m working on has been an overall success, one of my biggest failures with the project has been not proofreading it. I’d fall into the cycle of just not writing, so I wouldn’t have to proofread.

Instead of fighting it with willpower, I automated it. How? I tested both Mechanical Turk and Fiverr as proofreading platforms. Fiverr cost a total of $50 to have 62 pages edited. Just to give you an idea, editing 62 pages is my idea of a personal hell. But for less than a dollar/page, all of my hesitation, doubt, and negativity vanished.

Try it out today

You can automate almost all of the boring parts of your life, today, for less than 25 bucks and half an hour on Amazon. And make sure to have your assistant email me telling me how much time I saved you.

Create value by writing

2012-10-09T00:00:00Z

I just read Dan Shipper’s blog post on “How to build a blog readership” and it got me thinking about how I was able to ignite my own passion for writing this past summer.

Rewind 6 months. If you asked me for the 10 things that I hated doing the most, writing would surely make the list. It’s not that I’m a bad writer, but I was out of practice and my only memories of writing were from when I was forced to do it. I imagined myself sitting infront of a blank screen, cursor flashing, trying to bullshit my way through 1000 words (double-spaced) due in the morning. Writing? No thanks! I never wanted to write again. And can you blame me? Our schools make writing a chore, something to avoid, and turn so many away for life.

Instead of ignoring the problem, I took on the challenge headfirst. Failure has never stopped me and even after failing to actively blog a dozen times before, I started this new one and kicked it off bygiving up social media for 30 days. My first post, only 362 words, took almost a week to write. I mulled over it, wanted it to be perfect, and truthfully, I was scared of criticism. Scared to publish my words, scared that they wouldn’t be worth reading.

Finally, almost out of frustration, I clicked publish on the damn thing and walked away. And guess what, my world didn’t explode! I posted it on social media and disconnected for the next 30 days – unable to feel the sting of any criticism that would’ve been left.

The biggest thing I learned, and Dan mentions it in his post, is to just publish the damn thing. Stop being perfect. Proofread it a couple of times and get on with your life. A typo or mistake won’t ruin your post and, truthfully, most people are skimming anyways.

How I keep myself writing everyday

After my first quasi-successful post, I was hooked. In love. With more free time on my hands during the social media hiatus, I kept writing. My goal has been to write 1000 words, everyday, and I’ve mostly stuck with it since my first post on May 15th.

I mostly write for my blog or my book, but sometimes my daily allotment of words is spent on hashing out and evaluating my life in the journal that I’ve kept for over 1000 days. Not of all of your writing needs to be shared, and I think it’s important that you selfishly keep some words entirely for yourself.

Writing creates value

The biggest dividends paid from my writing has been the feeling of creating, becoming a producer of information, instead of continuing down the path as a chronic consumer. When I publish my thoughts, I create tangible value that can be shared with others.

And I never run out of things to write about. By keeping my idea muscle strong and writing down 10 brand new ideas everyday, I’ve amassed two entire notebooks filled with topics to write about.

Creating value through writing has been a huge eyeopener. The people I look up to the most, the Elon Musks and Steve Jobs of the world, they are chronic producers. They make things, execute outlandish ideas, and produce something valuable for the world. For me, writing was just the first step to becoming a producer – maybe it will be yours too?

Living without time

2012-09-16T00:00:00Z

The only unit of time that matters is heartbeats. Even if the world were totally silent, even in a dark room covered in five layers of foam, you’d be able to count your own heartbeats.
Paul Ford, 10 Timeframes

Time. When broken down into minutes, hours, days, such small units over a lifetime, they don’t really seem to exist. It’s almost like a reality that we all subscribe to – existing only because we agreed it should. On the other hand, time is always marching forward. Infinite. Abrupt when divided into years, decades, centuries.

The smallest units, insignificant over a lifetime, are also the most stressful. The most frustrating. I was sick of it.

I unsubscribed from the clock

Dropped my watch right into the garbage. Shut off the glowing green-blue digital clocks that seem to piggyback on every appliance known to man – microwave, stove, VCR. The one in the corner of my computer screen? Gone. On my iPhone, I changed it to a random timezone so, technically, it still has a clock, but at quick glance? Almost useless.

The effects were immediate. The first few days were so confusing. I worked on my laptop all day, totally devoured and consumed by creating things. I had no idea whether it was 11am or 7pm, and didn’t care – it was beautiful! I was able to really lose myself in a project without having a clock to constantly distract.

I learned how to read the sun – a skill that adapted on its own, so it was surprising when I caught myself turning to the window to figure out if I was done working for the day. I’ve tested myself and I’m pretty accurate, even with the season change.

3 Months Later

Though I’ve gotten used to the mental freedom, 3 months into it, the bigger changes are still sticking around. I’m less stressed. I don’t worry about how long things take or even bother considering how long they should take- Over a lifetime, an extra couple of minutes here or there is a rounding error and a worthy price to pay for the benefits.

I’m no longer chained to the clock. I measure my life in heartbeats and years, the only significant units to me.

Full disclosure: I used the calendar on my phone to notify me before an appointment.

The most interesting people are “local”

2012-08-27T00:00:00Z

I used to frequent a small sandwich shop, O’Bagelo’s. The owner and only employee, John Vito, was a miser and philosopher of sorts- he’d make interesting and thought provoking conversation while crafting your lunch.

“The most interesting people that I know are local. They read the city paper, get involved in their community, and constantly know what’s happening around them.”

It was just conversation, but this quote stuck with me over the years.

Now that I’ve gotten more into the movement, I’ve realized the most important thing that you can do for your community is to support your local ecosystem- whatever that means to you. For me, it means supporting small businesses and buying as close-to-home as possible. By keeping your dollars in town, you’re reinvesting money back into your neighborhood, instead of exporting it to some company in China.

Two months ago I made a pledge to spend $50/week supporting local food by buying most of my groceries from the Charleston Farmer’s Market. It’s not much, but imagine the change if everyone got onboard. Communities would be self-sustaining and local businesses vibrant.

But I think there’s more to this. I support other ecosystems that I’m interested in, too. I believe in bootstrapped startups, so I spend money on things like GitHub and App.net. And since I have my own self-published e-book, I buy every independent book that I can get my hands on.

I vote with my dollar and keep my money local in hopes that others will do the same. By supporting each others work, we create a vibrant ecosystem where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.

College was my biggest mistake

2012-08-09T00:00:00Z

When I turned 18, my parents expected me to go to college- it was the only option, the only way to be a successful adult. I’m a 2nd generation Italian. My mother and grandparents came over to America and bootstrapped themselves from nothing, so needless to say, I would be the first in the family to get a degree and it was kind of a big deal.

We were middle class, but not rich, so I had to borrow to afford a $44,000/year RIT tuition. It’s what everyone else does, right? $44,000 might as well have been a million dollars, because in my mind they were equally unfathomable- with only $300 in my checking account, I had to make a decision whether or not to borrow $176,000. Makes sense.

No one could tell me why I was wasting my creative energy, focus, and life on something I didn’t want to do. Classes didn’t hold my attention- I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class. My classes appealed to the lowest-common denominator. The bottom of the barrel.

Eventually, I stopped going to class. I didn’t care. I despise squandering my time and classes felt like the ultimate waste. The culmination of my second year was a 0.33 GPA.

Do you still put a GPA on your resume if it’s 0.33?

Eventually I dropped out. Well, actually, I failed out. And they told me not to come back. I was living with a roommate and scraping by making 10 bucks an hour doing web design. I lied to everyone in my life, including myself.

“I’m just doing an internship for the summer!”

But truthfully, I was too embarassed to tell them I failed, that I had let them down. Because, you need a degree to be successful, right? And now I’d never be successful.

I got stuck for a little while, and I think this is where many people end up their entire lives. $400 a week is hardly enough to live comfortably, but I made it work. Like, I could pay for rent and food, but had to sleep on the floor for 3 months because I couldn’t afford a bed. How could I possibly do better without a degree? I was lucky that I even had a job as a college dropout.

I hustled. I taught myself Rails and Linux. I freelanced on the side. I resold computers and camera lenses on Craigslist and eBay. Whatever it took.

I sold myself like a used car salesman

When it was time for a new job, I shot for the stars. I left college off of my resume, let my experience speak for itself, and sold my passion. And when college came up in the conversation, I had a story ready to go.

I’m still pursuing my degree in Software Engineering. All of my relevant experience is self-taught and I prefer to spend time teaching myself instead of sitting in a classroom.

Just a couple of interviews and the first job offer came in- $45k. When you’ve been living off of kidney beans and rice for a year, it’s equivalent to winning the powerball.

A second job offer, for $60k, arrived the next day. My belief that you’d be restricted to minimum wage jobs without college was absolutely not true. And the worst part was that it was self-limiting, a figment of my imagination. Success had been sitting in front of me all along.

Take the job, don’t be stupid!

Surely if the company was willing to pay me $60,000, they’d be willing to go higher. “Take the job”, everyone said. “Don’t be stupid. Now’s not the time to negotiate”. But I’ve never been one to let fear drive my decisions.

A 20-year old kid that was hardly scraping by on $10/hour turned down their $60,000 offer- reason?

“Unfortunately, I’m only able to consider offers over $100k at this time. If you’re in a position to negotiate, I’d love to talk more.”

Eventually, we settled on somewhere in the middle. Talk about hustling.

Years later, I started working at Twitpic. College didn’t even enter the conversation. Since then, I’ve been heavily recruited and created some of my own products. And the only thing that’s mattered has been my passion, knowledge, and experience.

Success is sitting right in front of you. You don’t need to have a bachelors degree to reach out and take it- to think anything else is a limiting belief that exists solely in your mind. Hustling = passion + ability to sell yourself. No degree required.

“All college taught me was how to pay off debt. I’m still learning.”

How 30 days without Social Media changed my life

2012-06-15T00:00:00Z

30 days ago, I made the decision to give up social media for a month. Well, here I am, reporting that I’m still alive and that the past month has been life changing- the most successful month of my existence.

Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Hacker News were all on my blacklist, well- sort of. My goal for giving up social media was to create more value in my life, quit hoarding information, and appreciate the time that I spent with friends. So, full disclosure- I briefly used Facebook and Twitter 5 times during my haitus to pimp blog posts, and I’m okay with that, because it was for the sole purpose of sharing value (and getting more pageviews, duh).

From the beginning

The first couple of days were full of withdrawl symptoms- I’d open a new tab in Chrome and start typing facebook.com without even thinking about it. I missed my constant entertainment from Twitter.

It got better. I forgot all about Twitter within days. I still missed Facebook, mostly because it came up in conversation all of the time.

Hey, did you see the picture Ryan tagged you in.. oh, nevermind.

The benefits were immediately apparent. With a mind free to wander and explore, I started to create things, to make moves, rather than suck down a never ending stream of information.

I wrote

I’ve written more words in the past 30 days than I have in my entire life- well, maybe besides that year I took AP English. I have over 20 blog posts drafted that I’m working on tweaking to perfection. And I’m getting better at crafting words and articulating myself because of it. You have to flex the muscle to keep it strong.

I sat down and tried to figure out what creating value in my life really meant, and had a difficult time with it. James Altucher talks about writing down ideas everyday, so that’s what I started doing. Forcing yourself to come up with 30 new ideas every morning leads to some good ones bubbling up to the surface once in awhile. Try it.

It lead to a book

I totally pulled a Tim Ferriss and advertised a book without having written a single word. My concept, scaling php applications, is for a unique book, which I’m qualified to write, but didn’t know if it would be interesting to others. I created a landing page and rolled the dice. The feedback was incredible, thousands of people signed up and hundreds were so excited that they pre-purchased it to get access to daily updates. Right now I’m wrapping up Chapter 4 and the book will be released on July 1st.

I meditated

My old morning routine: wake up, check facebook, check twitter. It sucked.

With two huge voids, it was time for a revamp. I’m lucky enough to be able to wake up when my body tells me to, usually around 9 or 10, so I’m always well rested. Once I’m up, I immediately make breakfast, drink Yerba Mate (with a bombilla), and meditate outside for 5 or 10 minutes before updating my journal.

Meditating was one of those things that sounded good in theory, but was always difficult for me to keep up with. Doing it for a short interval is perfect and even in spurts I find it incredibly beneficial, it clears my head and opens me up for the day.

I built stronger friendships

Not knowing what your friends are doing every second is liberating. It’s amazing how much you have to talk about when you don’t have a constant plug into their life. I built stronger friendships and forged a couple of new ones, including a relationship.

Would I have made the same friends and started a new relationship if I was still on social media? Part of me can’t help but think that the mystery of not knowing all the gory details that Facebook provides made them more intriguing to me.

I competed

Running has been a passion of mine for years. I love it. In some ways, I live for it (April 2012, I ran 3 miles every single day for the entire month). This month, I competed in a couple of 5Ks and even won some trophies. Look, there’s us fighting with swords that we won for our 1st and 2nd place finishes… in our age group.

Moving forward

What’s my plan now? Well, I’m back on social media. It’s nice to finally see “that picture that Ryan tagged me in”. But I don’t want to go back to my old routine, the new one is so much better. I love creating things- code, art, writing, whatever. I want to keep doing that, because the act of producing, being a maker, has changed my life.

If I want to read or post on social media, I will do it consciously and thoughtfully- so I won’t be using Twitter or Facebook from my phone. And no more Reddit. Like, it provided absolutely 0 value to me. I love the information diet that I’m on and all I need to do is not plug back in.

On Keeping a Journal

2012-06-05T00:00:00Z

One thing most people don’t know about me: In 2008, fed up with the daily grind of a 9 to 5 and being unsatisfied with life, I decided that I wanted to chase after my childhood dream of becoming a cop. I took the test for the New York State Police and did very well.

During the application process, I had a 1-on-1 with a 20 year NYSP veteran and we had a great conversation- “Do you have any regrets?”, I asked. “Are you glad that you chose to spend your life this way?”.

Steve, my only regret after being on the job for 20 years is that I didn’t keep a journal or dairy about everything I’ve seen and done. I’ve met the president, was sent to New Orleans during Katrina and NYC after 9/11. The whole Bucky situation. These were incredible, defining moments in my life and I wish that I could remember them forever, read through day-by-day and relive exactly how I felt in the moment.

The next day, I started keeping my own journal.

And for the past 1091 days, I’ve been journaling every single day- that’s about 3 years or 12% of my entire life. My only regret? I wish I started sooner. Every morning, I sit down for 10 minutes and write a paragraph about whatever, totally stream of conscious. Usually I write about nothing, but once in awhile, something really incredible and raw flows out. Most of the time, it’s in between. But it always helps me to figure out life.

Do you have one? No? Start now. It’s powerful to go back a week, a month, a year and see exactly what you were thinking, what was important to you, and realize how it did (or didn’t) impact your life. A year ago today, I drove to a wedding in Vermont, lost my wallet, and upgraded my internet. This summer’s blockbuster? Maybe not, but who knows how those events could have had a ripple effect on my life.

Looking back, it’s mesmerizing to realize the amount of data contained in 1091 days.

A Serious relationship, serious breakup, and too many 4th grade crushes
About 40lbs of weight loss, with pictures!
3 Jobs, one layoff, and how I blew a massive severance package with Amazon Prime during one week of unemployment (that’s responsible, right?)
Thousands of miles run, 17 half marathons, and a full 26.2
3 moves, 1 of them across the country. One with a sleezy landlord (Hey Patty Weaver, you still owe me my security deposit!)
Two weeks in Italy, 3 cruises, a flight to San Francisco, 8 trips to Connecticut, 4 to South Carolina, 2 to New Hampshire
2 cars, 5 extensive & expensive visits to the dealer (don’t buy an Audi)

Run naked

2012-05-24T00:00:00Z

In life, in business, in everything, we have the tendency to hide the rough edges, smooth over the unappealing, and give the illusion of perfect. Startups gloss over numbers, exaggerate, hide details- terrified of giving away some non-existant secret. People hide their feelings, opinions, and act on their best behavior.

Here’s a secret- no one likes your best behavior. Be real.

Run naked, and I don’t mean it literally, but run naked in your entire life. Parade your flaws. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Have an opinion. Be passionate. Let your personality rip. It’s what makes you charming, lovable.

Open up and share your secrets. Blog about how much money your business makes. Tell people your middle name. Stop being that guy at the beach with a shirt on. Own it.

Okay, so maybe I did mean it literally

I wanted to see how it’d really feel to run naked. So, I just went out and logged a late night 1 miler, completely buck-ass naked. That’s right- no shirt, no shoes, no pants, no problem? Naked.

I logged my best flat-out mile time- 5:24. And it didn’t even feel difficult. The adrenaline was out of control- it was incredible. I felt alive. Nervous and scared, too. But alive.

Cut the bullshit. Be yourself and nothing else. It’s liberating and will change everything you thought that you knew. Who knows, if it’s anything like my run you’ll end-up breaking some of your own records.

Oh, and who would believe me without proof?

You’re an artist too

2012-05-20T00:00:00Z

That opting out [of creativity] that happens in childhood … moves in and becomes more ingrained by the time you get to adult life.

I watched How to build your Creative Confidence by David Kelly today and it really resonated with me.

I’ve never identified as a creative type. “I’m just a programmer”, I’d say. “I don’t have an eye for that design stuff”. But really it was a defense mechanism- a cop out- being afraid of judgement and criticism.

Here’s the truth. Everyone is an artist, musician, painter, singer, actor. Even you. Even me.

I just started oil painting a few weeks ago. For less than 50 bucks, I walked out of Michael’s with everything I needed to start slapping oil onto canvas. And I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve only made a few paintings so far, but people tell me they look pretty good. I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter what they think, though, because I love what I’ve created. On top of that, I’ve opened a creative outlet that I’ve never experienced before. And the feeling is incredible.

That’s all it takes- there isn’t a magic club or secret society- 50 bucks and you can start calling yourself an artist too. I promise you won’t regret it. Do it. Create art.

Anyways, I have to get back to this oil painting of my cat wearing suspenders and smoking a cigar.

Giving up on Social Media

2012-05-15T00:00:00Z

It’s no secret that I love social media. And my friends love it too. We love it so much, that when we hang out in real life, at any moment, someone in the group is checking Twitter. It’s the norm, and it’s stupid.

Twitter and Facebook have changed the way that I interact with the world. I moved to Charleston in September knowing almost no one and, through Twitter, I’ve made so many friends that I’m lucky to have. Twitter is also how I met @noaheverett and eventually got involved with Twitpic. There’s no doubt that I owe so much to social media, but it’s consuming my life.

Plain and simple, it’s a distraction. I’m constantly devouring information, whether it’s what Ryan is having for lunch or an interesting TED talk about paper towels (seriously, it’s awesome, watch it). I’ve become an information addict.

I’m at a crossroad. I just turned 25 and while I’m extremely proud of what I’ve done, I know that I could have accomplished so much more. Sure, there’re plenty of reasons why, but it all comes back to being a chronic consumer, and not a producer. I’m too busy at the buffet to weed the garden- simply put, I’m just not creating enough value in my life.

Here’s what I’m doing about it

I’m off Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, and RSS until June 15th.
I’ve uninstalled Twitter for Mac, Twitter for iOS, and Tweetbot.
I’ve blocked the sites from my computer using the hosts file.
Set Facebook to email me event invitations (hey, I’m not trying to commit social suicide).

Sure, it’s only 30 days, but it’s enough to build a habit of not being constantly attached.

I’m cutting out major streams of information and distraction. I’ll still be reading articles, blogs, and communicating with my friends- but it’ll be something that I do consciously and thoughtfully. With less information to consume, I’ll be able to focus on producing valuable content on my blog and in my life.