“How can I do that?”

“How can I do that?” and “How can I help” are two of the best questions to keep in your arsenal of communication.

“How can I do that?” is the question to ask when you’ve reached an impasse with a client, co-worker, or family member. It’s the question that both shows your interest in fulfilling their request, but also offloads the pressure on them to consider what they are asking of you.

“How can I help?” is the question to ask when you have the upper hand in any engagement. Maybe you’re the worker who knows the boss is trying to get her schedule cleared out before vacation. You have the time that she needs. Let her tell you how she can help.

“How can I help?” signals that you’re setting aside your preferences for a moment to subjugate them to the wishes of the person you’re offering to help. Not only is it a fantastically kind thing to do, but it can serve you well in life and business, too.

What’s done in love is done well

They say that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. There is real strength in love, particularly when it comes to the things you do. If you love what you do, you will do lots of it.

If you do lots of something, you’ll get really good at doing it.

If you do lots of something that you love, you do it extraordinarily well because you’ve gotten many more opportunities to practice it and because your love of what you’re doing you will focus that skilled hand.

What’s done in love, is indeed done well.

The tenuous grip we have on the world

One of my grandmothers suffers from dementia. It’s sad to watch her lose her mind and her memory. Her mind seems to live in the year when my father and uncle were little kids. She doesn’t know who I am or who her grandkids are.

Watching her has been somewhat of a lesson to me that I should be careful not to take my connection to reality for granted. It can be gone in a moment. Our grip on the world is tenuous, at best.

So I am reminded to take care of my body and mind to the best of my ability every day. Make things that are common in life easy and introduce sharp challenges that come and go. (Stress isn’t bad for you unless it’s long-term stress. Short-term stress strengthens your body or mind.)

Long-term planning is the worst (but also the best)

A good plan violently executed right now is far better than the perfect plan executed next week. That’s a quote from General George Patton.

You must start now and get the ball rolling. Once you start moving, you’ll be able to make things more perfect and steer the ship. Long-term planning isn’t just a vague idea that might need to happen in the future, it is important.

Too often we get stuff making plans and never starting to execute them. Get the ball rolling first. Clean up your plans and processes second. Work out long-term plans third. Don’t get it backward.

Focus on doing less to do more

When I run into a block of time where I procrastinate (this happens very often to me) I stop trying to do so much.

The trick is to get your mind started like one of those old cars that needed a spinning crank in the front of them.

Start small. Take an hour task and commit to working on it for five minutes. Almost always, that five-minute jump-start turns into a long focused block of work on that project.

Depending on how I am feeling, I will use five-minute or twenty-minute long blocks of time to “jump start” my brain. This helps to put aside the distractions or worries or whatever dumb thing my brain has decided is more important at that moment.

When there is a lot to do, focus on doing less, and somewhat paradoxically, you’ll do more.

I’m still on the road to being the best and most focused version of myself, but this one little trick has helped me along the way to be more effective and efficient in the hours that I work than almost anything else.

The importance of the morning routine

I’ve noticed that it’s nearly impossible to maintain perfect self-discipline throughout the day. But I’ve also noticed that the first hour of the day is the foundation of the day.

If I am lazy and thoughtless about my actions at the beginning of the day, I almost always have pretty bad and unproductive days. That first 60-90 minutes is where I need to focus all of my self-discipline efforts.

When I have my morning routine in order, it’s almost automatic that I have a great day. Instead of expending distracting (and exhausting) efforts to get myself “up” for my work, I can clamp down that first hour or so and ride through a smooth, productive, and satisfying day.

P.S. I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff written by professional writers and it makes me realize how much I stink at writing. I’m trying to break down this stuff I’m reading to find best practices I can use to slowly transform my own writing to be more coherent and more professional.

Blame the world, or don’t blame the world

Most of us know somebody who contributes all their failures to some greater conspiracy or an outside force that is the “real” cause of their problems.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we often do the same thing, but hopefully to a lesser degree. It’s very easy and very enticing to blame the systems around us for our shortcomings.

The things around us don’t hold us back, our perception of those things is what holds us back.

When we focus on the events around us and things that we cannot control, we choose to overlook the flawed aspects of our own lives and things that we can control (and improve!)

The stability and performance of our lives and companies come from paying attention to what can be improved upon within them, not stuff that we don’t like in the world around us.

It’s easy to get angry and blame the world. It’s difficult to look at ourselves and work to get better. However, only one of those methods brings improvement.

Some businesses have an unhappy existence

A self-absorbed and uncontrolled life is nearly always an unhappy existence. However, much like the Dunning-Kruger effect, the confidence of the self-absorbed person is inversely proportionate to their ability to understand why they have a miserable existence.

I’m more interested in the uncontrolled aspect of the “uncontrolled life.” I believe that the lack of order in your life or business leads to a lack of peace and stability.

In terms of business, the disorderly business owner spends his days putting out fire after fire. Everything is a reaction to the next crisis. The business owner who has systems and orderliness spends the majority of his time being proactive and avoiding problems before they become full-blown crises.

While orderliness and attention to detail might seem annoying at the moment, they give us peace and stability in the long term.

Dry, boring, and difficult work

Most work is dry, boring, and difficult. It’s difficult until you’ve done it for long enough. It’s boring until you know why you’re doing it. And it’s dry until you care about the process of doing it.

Bigger company, or more freedom and flexibility?

As you get better at the work you do, the demand for your skills will increase. There is a good problem that arises. How do you hire more people to make more money and build your business?

There is an alternative as well. This solution is to double what you charge per hour and only work half the hours.

When you hire more people, you scale your business and add pressure and expectations to your work. Maybe that is what you want. The payoff is great and you an on your way to building a bigger business.

However, there is a peaceful allure to the life of a successful freelancer who operates independently. Maybe that is what you prefer.

If so, the goal should be to leverage your skills and demand to prioritize gaining flexibility and freedom in your personal life rather than a simple quest for building a bigger and bigger company for the sake of having a bigger company and making more money.

By doubling your rates, you have the choice to work as many hours and make twice as much, or to scale back your working hours and live a more free and flexible life.

We should spend more time thinking about what we are trying to get out of our work and find a creative solution.

Building and selling highly valuable skills

We must develop and build valuable skills that society wants, but doesn’t have easy access to.

Building your highly valuable skills is more than just absorbing the zeitgeist of the given moment. Consuming social media and becoming an expert in all things pop culture, sports, and movies have little staying power because what society trains you for, can just as easily train someone else who can quickly replace you.

Deliberately practicing rare and valuable skills is the way to build them. These are not skills that any person can pick up by reading a book, they are skills that require practice and getting better. These hands-on skills that you develop are usually highly creative, technical, personality-driven, or non-automate-able things. This is part of what makes them so valuable when you are able to do them.

Identify skills that are valuable. Develop those rare and valuable skills by practicing them. Learn to build and sell valuable skills and there will always be a place in the market for you, no matter the interest rates, inflation, economic stability, etc…

You can’t skimp on it

Success is not all about hard work, but hard work is absolutely a requirement. But hard work that is pointed in the wrong direction is just a fast track to a destination you don’t want and maybe don’t even know exists.

My problem over the past three years is that I skimp on hard, focused work way too much. When I get this focus and hard work issue sorted out, it’s going to be awesome. I can’t skimp on the hard work part of the equation.

Your passion needs you to be constantly courageous

All of us have good ideas. All of us can make a viral moment. All of us can steal a few moments of attention here and there. Sustained success requires more. Our dreams don’t become reality when we don’t constantly do the work and get our business or brand out there.

Too often, we come up with reasons to not do something, rather than making up reasons why we should do something.

Our passion is always waiting for our courage to step up and make the dream a reality.

No matter what your business or job is, you have to deliver more finished work and get your name out there. Whether you’re washing dishes in a kitchen or creating content for Instagram, get out there and be courageous in delivering your work.

New baby today

I was up most of the night because my daughter was born overnight in the early hours of October 14th. We named her Collette Elizabeth. I don’t have much else to say. Words always fail me in moments like this and I’m envious of people who have the perfect things to say in times like these. She’s great and mom is great. I’m going to get some sleep.

Trap the problems of today within today

When you’re writing your to-do list for the day at 10:45pm you can probably chalk it up as a day that’s gone off the rails.

I usually write my daily blog post at 8am, but it’s 11:35pm right now and I’m writing what should have been written 15 hours ago.

Bad day in terms of productivity, but I see it and I’m feeling it, and it will not spread into tomorrow.

A slow day can’t be made up by working late into the right. That simply destroys the start of the next day and drags the problems of today into tomorrow.

Tell better stories and do more creative work with this trick

About ten years ago, I was close friends with a young guy who started a YouTube channel about tech. Every day he would find time to work on his channel and create content. He focused so much on getting better and the process of making his videos. He never cared about the numbers. Just the process and what he controlled. After a few years of grinding his audience grew incredibly and his business exploded. This caused him to become one of the most influential YouTubers in the tech and creative space and has allowed him to connect with an audience that loves him and loves his work.

This story is an exercise in story-writing with a form. Use forms for everything you can. They make things easy and they guide you when you feel lost.

The story guide I’ve stolen from Pixar writers goes like this: “Once upon a time, there was _________. Every day _________. One day, _________. Because of that, _________. Because of that _________. And because of that _________. Until finally _________.”

If you look, I used this form in the story at the top of this blog post.

I have guides, systems, and forms for email responses, social media content, video content, email newsletter ideas, and speeches or presentations I give. Guides aren’t cheating, they become your brand and they help you present your thoughts and ideas in clear, compelling, and professional ways. They also help smash creative block.

In upcoming blog posts, I hope to talk about some of the forms I use for content creation, logo design, photo shoot planning, and more of the creative work I do. Forms and systems are good!

95% is perfect

Trying to achieve 100% perfection is impossible. Trying to close the 3% gap from 95% to 98% takes as much effort as it took to get from 0% to 95%.

So the energy used to get to 98% is wasted energy that could have been used to create another 95% perfect product.

95% perfect IS perfect.

How to make money

Making money is pretty simple. You need to show up and do the job. Even if you’re not particularly good at it, you’ll make money and you’ll get better at it. You just have to show up. For you, for your family, for whatever your purpose is, you have to show up. That’s how you make money.

How to control pressure and be more creative

Pressure is the force that strangles many creative efforts before they ever get off the ground. The anxiety-inducing deadline and the tightness you feel in your chest. Sometimes it tingles, and sometimes it just flat-out hurts.

The most creative ideas and insights come when the pressure is gone and when you can trust your ability to come up with ideas and just fall into that beautiful comfort of creative confidence.

So how can we remove pressure? One of my favorite ways is by setting unrealistic expectations.

Imagine having a client that expects three logo concepts in the next week. That might sound scary. But then you decide to deliver 20 logo concepts. That is pretty much impossible, but the ridiculous nature of the goal means that you free yourself of the expectations and give yourself a bubble of freedom in which you have the capability of being much more brilliantly creative.

Insane expectations that you can’t possibly achieve make it easier to get the work done. Halfway to impossible is a really good place to be.