You are what you happen to be

My fourth tip for ultra-productivity is as follows:

Don’t worry about trying harder or working to develop better habits. The way you were born is the best you can possibly be. The only habits worth having, after all, are bad habits so let them run wild and don’t worry about working on good habits.

Inflate your ego and tell yourself you’re great just the way you are. Those bad habits are just you expressing yourself and it’s the way you’re meant to be. Is there even such a thing as a “bad” habit?

In short, don’t work on making yourself a better person, commit to being exactly who you are at your worst moments.

Don’t drink water, drink soda

The third tip for ultra-productivity is as follows:

Don’t drink water. Instead, drink lots of soda and sugary drinks. This way your blood sugar levels can always be sky-high and your caloric intake will be way more than you can burn in a day. Remember, you don’t go outside and exercise so you’ll also be able to gain lots of weight this way.

Blowing up your body with loads of soda and sugary drinks will make sure you are crashing by mid-afternoon and unproductive for virtually the entire day.

Stay inside and wreck your sleep

My second rule for being ultra-productive is to always stay indoors and make a special effort to stay up very late to wreck your circadian rhythm.

This will serve the dual purpose of depriving you of vitamin D and fresh air and staying up late will ensure you feel horrible for hours after waking up because your body will never properly adjust to going to sleep and waking up at different hours every day.

So do not go out and stay up very late every day.

Be as lazy as possible

I’m going to spell out some rules for productivity over the next few blog posts.

Rule number one is to always take the easiest route possible. In fact, complain bitterly when things are difficult and use that as an excuse for being unproductive.

Being lazy is easy, so do that and you avoid the possibility that you’re ever uncomfortable.

Always avoid any activity that could help you get started or build momentum and assure yourself constantly that your personal fattening and softening is the real purpose of life.

Rule number two tomorrow.

Make it better

You’ve been given what you’ve got so that you can make it better.

99% of change will come through work, not some naturally occurring “specialness” in a person or place.

Invest your time and effort into creating, not consuming. Creating takes the little you have and makes it better, stronger, bigger.

It doesn’t always bring fame

Fred Newton stepped into the Mississippi River in July of 1930 and aimed to become the first man to swim from Minneapolis to New Orleans and therefore swim the entire length of the river.

He swam through manure and freezing waters and finally, he arrived in New Orleans in December of that year-three months later than his projection.

This incredible feat of endurance and fortitude earned Newton little more than the world record. He lived his life as an insurance salesman and later as a business owner.

The story reminds me of my artistic roots. Not everything you do has to make you money or garner fame. Not everybody has to “like” it for it to be good work. Nobody on Facebook or Instagram had anything to say about Fred Newton, yet he still put in the work and saw the project through to completion.

Do the work in the dark and let the fame decide if she comes or not.

When everything is free to touch, taste, and talk about

What happens to our society when even the well-meaning ones feel the crush of saying the right words so as not to offend?

When there is a penalty of social shame for mistakes or rule-breaking that somebody was not aware of, everyone walks on eggshells and second-guesses themself.

Of course, it’s a facade of second-guessing, because the real concern is to say the correct outward word, not to adjust the inward motion that would lead to saying something objectionable.

I like it when the torn edges of society are exposed and even allowed to be exposed. It promotes a freeness in the “decent” people of a society.

We know who the extremists are and we have a safe bubble to operate and live and express ourselves.

When that bubble is squeezed and everyone can become an extremist of some sort at any moment, every express you make could lead to your social downfall or ostracization.

Despite my constant mistakes, you can trust my opinion

No matter how often we foul it all up, it’s hard to be humble and set aside our “gut feel” Why is it so hard to stop for a minute and consider that the advice we’re getting may be better than our gut feel.

If your gut feel keeps leading you astray, maybe try listening more when others speak and have a moment of pause before injecting that opinion that you’re *so* sure about.

That’s enough for my morning rant.

You make it worse when you try to make it better

You’re a new photographer and you just took a great photo of the best sunset you’ve ever seen.

You take the photo home and load it onto your computer.

You process the photo and you’re sure that by pumping up the saturation and blasting the contrast to level 11, you're making the photo look better.

No! Subtlety always looks better. When we intervene and speak over someone, overrule nature doing its work, or even adding our “boost” to our artwork and photos, we lose something.

Addition by subtraction is the way to go. We almost always tend to think that pumping things up makes them better because we put effort into it.

Nope. Effort does not equal better. Better equals better and sometimes stepping back and not adding your input makes the art, the speech, the work better.

Work on building confidence which allows you to actively try NOT to make things better and you’ll see how much better that makes everything.

Write it down

I had a great idea for today’s post that popped into my mind while I was working on something else.

I finished what I was working on and got ready to write this post and realized I forgot the idea. It’s gone. Vanished.

Like all good ideas, it’ll come back as soon as I hit the “Publish” button today, but I’ll write about it later.

The lesson is, when you have a good idea, take 30 seconds and write it down. You will never regret doing that. Write it down, make a note in your phone, scribble it on your arm with a pen. Whatever it takes. Write it down.

Small adjustments

Change happens fast, but it is rare and only happens a few times in your life.

You can make small adjustments right now. If you apply small adjustments to pivotal aspects of your work and business, it can change the way everything works.

Then you have to observe the difference, take the good, and make more small changes to continuously refine whatever you’re working on.

Small adjustments can make big differences.

Productivity hack: FOMO

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is one of the primary reasons I get distracted and further procrastinate.

I often don’t start something because it will take 30 minutes and I’m worried that maybe I can use that 30 minutes to do something better. I’ll end up spending 30 minutes worrying about missing out on doing something better when I could have done the thing.

That’s the FOMO I’m talking about.

Assigning time and rigidly scheduling is the death of my productivity. Too much scheduling is a fragile way of living. One distraction or unforeseen event and the day is off the rails.

Better it is to set aside work blocks when you know that for 50-60 minutes you will do personal projects, or that big business project you’ve been working on, or maybe 60 minutes to workout, and so on.

When you do something you love, you don’t worry about how much time it’s taking. You just start doing it and you usually end up doing it for much longer than you expected. So why not start using that approach with work?

No rigid time window, but a loose block of time when you pack in as much work as you can.

You will not worry about “losing time” and you will also see that you pack in much more work. When you schedule 30 minutes for a task, it will take at least 30 minutes. When you don’t assign a time, you’d be shocked to find you can get it done in 15 minutes.

Judging imperfection and a personal flaw

I’m always so quick to judge imperfection, but one of my greatest flaws is waiting to start because everything isn’t yet perfect. Usually, I don’t think I’m good enough and am afraid of the criticism I’m sure that I’ll face.

That doesn’t stop me from having this “bent” toward looking at something somebody else has actually done (as opposed to me just talking about doing something) and finding a way to be critical of some little aspect of what is being done.

It’s always better to do something 80% perfectly than be the person who talks about being perfect.

Start sooner (don't shave the yak!)

That’s the message. When the hour or the day or even your life gets filled up with the little stuff you want to clear out before you start the big meaningful project, you usually don’t get to that project.

Start sooner. Cut away the gunk.

Seth Godin brilliantly describes the process in his pithy blog post entitled: Don’t Shave That Yak! (Good read!)

Good luck if a bird poops on you?

This past Saturday, I completed my first “imperial century” ride on my bike. It’s 100+ miles on the bike and it’s not particularly easy.

In the course of the first 20 miles, I was crapped on by a bird hanging out above me. The guy I was riding with saw the poop on my leg and laughed while he commented “that means our ride will have good luck!”

60 miles later, my left crank arm and pedal flew off and I nearly had a terrible crash on the bike. Not so sure about the “good luck” thing.

Funny how often we use “superstitions” to fill in and explain little happenings? These little tweaks or happenstances we link to some spiritual movement that will bless us with good fortune?

Superstition is interesting, but I’ve never been able to believe in it. Bring on the black cats and full moons, I’ll keep my hat on straight and you won’t ever catch me knocking on wood.

Get people to listen to you

Best to listen in a conversation. Just as good to force others to listen.

How? Have the discipline to leave out essential or obvious details as you tell a story.

When you do this, people notice and engage. As soon as somebody asks a question they’re engaged and listening and probably a few others in the group are, too.

It’s hard to be confident enough to leave out glaring details, but it’s a great tool for sharing your message more effectively.

Governments punishing good and bad

Do you ever wonder how a government decides what they will reward or punish?

If there is not an objective foundation from which they draw the laws, how can you ensure that laws created today will still be worthwhile in 100 years or how can we be sure that 100-year-old laws are still valuable today?

Is the "good of the nation" or the "good of the common man" the basis upon which laws should be created? Who determines what “good” is or who the “common man” is?

Maybe the shifting sand of this loose foundation is why virtually every major empire in recorded history seems to have a shelf life of about 250 years at a maximum from the time they ascend to become a great world power.

So long-winded

I’m so long-winded when I write. I over-share details and I don’t leave enough for your imagination to fill in.

My favorite part of most of my photography is the shadows. They hide the details for you to fill in as you wish.

I write a lot because I don’t spend enough time writing a little.

It’s hard to edit and cut things down, but it’s so nice to read short, witty, and punchy sentences. “Short” is the most important of those characteristics.

Here’s to more proof-reading and editing and spending a few more minutes on these posts every day.

Momentum was derailed

Everything was chugging along just fine and I almost missed a day of writing my daily post here, but I slipped in just before it had to go live and threw together a post explaining my last minute post.

But those sparks must have been the foreboding of the imminent derailment which has now left me not writing for some four days.

Momentum is a bizarre thing. It’s hard to get momentum up to speed, but once you're at top speed, it’s pretty easy to keep pounding away. It’s very easy to take your eye off the task at hand and lose that momentum, though. Then you have to get to work hard building momentum again.

If you don’t work to build that momentum again, it’s only harder and harder to get going back up to speed.

So I’m cutting the head off the snake before he grows too much larger. Four missed days of writing are enough and it’s hard even banging out these few words today. But I’ve done it and I’m getting back up to speed.

The zealot and the zealous critic

Zealots have gained a bad reputation by critics who (rightfully so) often pick out the seeming unchecked hypocrisy in the zealot’s behavior.

The zealous critic, however, will often ascribe outward ends as the cause behind the zealot’s zeal and paint him as a fanatic (especially in matters that seem trivial to the critic.)

What if some (maybe most?) zealots actually believe what they’re zealous about? What if they do think it will bring about a better world, or solve some great problem?

Even if the cause has great flaws which the zealot misses, to miscast him as a fanatic out for some other end fills the critic with a misguided zeal–some might even say he has become a zealot in the cause of ending all “zealotry.”

Attacking the person and attempting to mind-read are losing arguments. Splitting the person and their belief from what you think they must be out to do will change the way you perceive everyone around you. It serves to think better of others, argue in a more productive manner, and be more humble in your own conduct.