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In this bundle, books include Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis, Email Field Guide by David Sparks, Design for Conversions by Brian Casel, and Build & Launch by Justin Jackson.
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My thanks to ReadBundle for sponsoring the site this week.
As I write this, the snow is coming down heavy in Kansas City and there’s a hot cup of coffee on my desk.
In just a few days, my hometown football team, the Broncos, will be playing the Patriots in Denver for the AFC Championship. It’s surely Manning’s last season in Denver (and probably his last season in the NFL entirely) — it would be great to see him get a ring while wearing the orange and blue.
This week’s Fantastic Friday is a bit different than normal. Less links, but I think you’ll enjoy.
As always, thanks for reading. I hope you have an excellent weekend.
— Shawn
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Next month I’ll be writing about tools and workflows. It’s going to be super fun and nerdy. Some of the stuff we’ll cover includes a rundown of my favorite iOS and Mac apps, my writing routine and the tools I use, time and task management, how to perform a workflow audit, and more.
If you’ve got a workflow question, or an idea for something you’d like me to discuss, please let me know.
You can email me, or ask me a workflow question on Twitter.
I just backed this game on Kickstarter. It looks simple yet fun. Because sometimes you want to play a game that’s not going to be an several-hour-long process.
Tweetbot is, by far and away, the best Twitter app out there.
Something in particular that I love about it is that you can create a list and then set that list as your main timeline. If you follow several hundred people, but you don’t want to keep up with everyone all the time, you can create a list with just a few dozen people and then set that list as your main timeline.
I think the easiest way to create a new Twitter list and populate it is via the Twitter website itself. Here’s how you do that:
I realize that: why not just unfollow folks until your main timeline is at a manageable size? Well, you could totally do that. But I found that it was significantly easier for me to go through my list of everyone I’m following and “start over” in a manner of speaking by creating a new list. Also, I have more than one list. I have lists of local KC people, a list of designers and developers whom I respect, and more.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
(Side note the above quote I discovered thanks to The Personal MBA. A book that’s a bargain at 20-times the price.)
In his book, Deep Work, Cal Newport states that as our information economy grows, there is an ever-increasing advantage for knowledge workers who are able to focus.
His Deep Work Hypothesis is this:
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then amen it the core of their working life, will thrive.
In this article, as we hit on the importance of margin for our mental and creative energy, I want to frame it in the context of deep work.
If you want to do your best creative work, you’ve got to show up every day. But showing up is just half of it.
Once you’ve carved out the time you need to work, when you do sit down to focus, do you know what it is that you’re going to work on? And are you able to spend an hour or more of your time working without interruption?
For me, I have a minimum of two hours a day that I spend on what Newport would call deep work. In fact, it’s the very first thing I do in the morning: I write.
I set a note out for myself the day before that tells me what my writing topic will be. This way, when it comes time for me to do the work, all I need to do is open my text editor and begin writing. I don’t have to spend my time thinking about what to write about, I simply write.
Writing is not easy. It’s never been easy, and I suspect it never will be. I’ve been writing as my full-time vocation for half-a-decade now, and sitting down to write is as challenging, and cognitively demanding as ever.
Now, don’t take this as me complaining about my job. I love writing. I love the sound of my clicky keyboard. I love having a hot cup of coffee and a couple of hours to share a story or an idea. But no matter what, writing is hard work.
Challenging, demanding work is not mutually exclusive from work that is satisfying. In fact, the two usually go hand in hand.
And thus, I have a two very important reasons to show up every day and write:
Secondly, writing is my job. Literally everything about my business stems from writing. If I’m not writing, then the very underpinnings of my work and business will slowly unravel.
As I mentioned above, one very important step in my writing routine is The Note.
The other is having margin for my mental and creative energy.
Margin is, simply put, breathing room.
Does your mind have breathing room? Do you have have a strong distaste for distractions? Are you comfortable with boredom?
Now, of course you dislike distractions. I know that you know that I know that when you’re trying to do something, the last thing you want is to be interrupted. But, when the rubber meets the road, do you honestly, truly, really, really dislike distractions?
It’s one thing to be annoyed at the external distractions of unwanted phone calls and passive aggressive taps on the shoulder by bored coworkers.
It’s another thing altogether to let yourself CMD+Tab over to your email app every 10 minutes.
That tug you feel when you’re at the far edge of your attention span…? That distraction from within that shows up when you sit down to do work that matters…? What are you doing about that?
I totally know how it goes. You’re sitting down to work on a project, but after 10 or 20 minutes you hit a roadblock. What then? Do you instinctively reach for your phone to check Facebook? Do you switch over to the Twitter app or check your email inbox real quick? Or do you stay focused?
When you are trying to focus on deep work, don’t give up after 15 minutes. Stick with it for an hour.
When Matt Gemmell is writing and he hits a mental block, he reaches for a ball to toss while thinking. Marco Arment wrote a computer script that quits out of Tweetbot and Email in case he accidentally leaves them open. John Gruber tends to spend his time reading through all his RSS feeds in one pass, then focuses on writing; he also has an Apple Script that takes all the read-but-not-yet-replied-to emails in his inbox and archives them at the end of the day.
These are brilliant behaviors and tactics. Because they state that, in order to do our best creative work, we need depth and focus. Depth is a result of uninterrupted focus on a single task. And uninterrupted focus is a result of, well, not being interrupted — not being distracted.
To do your best creative work, you have to do more than hedge off the distractions from outside (buzzing phones and office interruptions). You also have to cut off the distractions from within.
You do that by creating margin for your thoughts and margin for your creative energy.
When was the last time you had a few minutes of free time and you chose not to spend it checking email, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? This morning, when you woke up, did you reach for your phone and spend some time perusing the news and your social network timelines before getting out of bed?
Here is, by far and away, one of the best ways you can keep margin for your thoughts and margin for your creative energy:
Now, we all know that there’s nothing morally or instinctively wrong with checking your social media timeline before getting out of bed. And neither is there anything wrong with keeping your computer’s email app open all day and switching over to it every few minutes.
But what these moments of “just checking” do is teach our brains that boredom is bad. They put a ceiling on our creative energy.
You won’t reach the height of what you’re creatively capable of if you can’t go 60 minutes without checking your email or scrolling your Facebook timeline.
Choosing to allow yourself to be bored when standing in line at the grocery store is also a choice to set yourself up to do your absolute best creative work.
Having a set time for deep work is liberating. The days when I know I’ll have have several hours of uninterrupted time are the days I most look forward to.
Not only do I look forward to the task and process themselves, but I also love the work that is produced after a season of deep work and measured progress.
Again, to quote Cal Newport:
To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing — a task that requires depth.
Your best creative work happens when you’re in the zone. When, in the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, you’ve found flow.
Getting in the zone, finding flow, making progress on your best creative work, growing in skills as a creative, all of this requires intentional practice. It requires depth.
The good news is two-fold:
Deep work and diligence are skills. You can learn them, you can practice them, and you can get better at them. In fact, you can incorporate them into your everyday life!
Just like with regaining margin for your finances you need: (1) a short-term, drastic change in behavior to get some quick momentum; and (2) a long-term commitment to doing things differently.
I suggest that you start with a week-long information diet. And then, try to implement one new “alternative” action to those moments when you’re bored and want to reach for your phone.
Try this: take one week — or, if you’re feeling timid, start with 24 hours — and spend it disconnected from news and media.
Try going a whole week with no television, no news, and no social media. Perhaps a whole weekend with no email. Or even a whole day with no digital devices at all.
It sounds wild, right? This is some serious living-on-the-edge stuff. And the positive impact will be great.
In Chapter 6 of The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris quotes Herbert Simon. Simon says (emphasis added):
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
You need margin for your thoughts and margin for your creative energy is so that we can have a reserve of energy and attention that you can spend focusing on doing work that matters.
During your information fast, here’s another tip from Ferris:
Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?” It’s not enough to use information for “something” — it needs to be immediate and important. If “no” on either count, don’t consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
Little moments of mental down time can do wonders for our long-term ability to create, problem solve, and do great work. So, what are some alternatives when we’ve got a moment of down time?
For the times I do want to use my iPhone when I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, I’ve come up with a few alternatives instead of just checking Twitter or email. These are alternatives to The Just Checks:
Launch Day One and log how you’ve spent your time so far for the day. Doing this for a few weeks can also be super helpful for getting a perspective of where your time and energy are being spent.
Write down 3 new ideas. These could be articles you want to write, business ideas, places you want to visit or photograph, topics you want to research, date ideas for you and your spouse, gift ideas for a friend, etc. These ideas never have to to be acted on — the point isn’t to generate a to-do list, but rather to exercise your mind. Ideation and creativity are muscles, and the more we exercise them the stronger they get.
Send a text message to a friend or family member to tell them how awesome they are.
Don’t get out your phone at all.
These alternatives are meant to be healthy. They have a positive long-term effect and satisfy that need to do something during a moment of down time.
The whole point of having these alternatives is so that we don’t merely default into the passive consumption of content (ugh).
Take advantage of those down time moments, and allow your mind to rest for a bit. Or engage your mind by doing something active and positive that you can use the next time you’ve got an hour or two scheduled for your deep work.
What I love about having this bias against passive information consumption is that it helps cultivate a bias toward action.
Thus, instead of putting our energy into managing and watching the incoming — the inbox — we put our energy into creating, doing, and making.
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Looking for more information about Margin? Check out this page.
As we continue with this month’s focus on margin, today we’re going to talk about getting and keeping margin in your schedule.
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I love how David Allen says that you can’t actually manage time. If you start with 5 minutes, there’s no way to manage it well enough that it will turn into 6 minutes.
What you can do is manage how you spend your time. Which is more like time stewardship — because you alone are responsible for taking care of the time you have in the day.
And this is why margin in our schedule is so important. It gives us the breathing room and the wherewithal to steward our time and manage ourselves in how we spend it.
In his book, Margin, Richard Swenson states that there are four main areas of life that we most need margin in. They are our emotional energy, our physical energy, our finances, and our schedule.
And I would add one more area to that list: We also need margin in our mental energy — our thoughts, and with it, creative energy.
You can’t pit any of these against one another when looking for one that is more or less important. They overlap and intertwine with one another so much that when we have margin in one area, it helps open the door to margin in the other areas. And, conversely, when we lack margin in one area, it puts a strain on the others.
Over the coming weeks, we’re going to dive in to each of these. Today, let’s start with how to get some breathing room in our schedules.
When there is margin in our life, it brings with it a sense of contentment, simplicity, balance, and rest.
Consider this with your current schedule… do you feel content, balanced, and rested?
At the end of the day, when you look back at how you spent your time, do you feel content? Or do you feel frustrated at all the things you didn’t and all the fires you had to react to and put out?
At the end of your day, do you feel that your day was balanced? Were you Meaningfully Productive? Did you spend your time on things that matter most to you in more than just one area of your life? Is there an area of your life that dominates your schedule and causes other areas of your life to get out of balance?
At the start of your day, do you feel rested and prepared to do awesome things? Or do you feel behind before you even begin?
Your answers to these questions can help you determine if there is any margin in your schedule. But my hunch is that you don’t need much self-assessment to know if your schedule has breathing room or not.
Imagine waking up in the morning and being able to spend time doing what you want to do.
Perhaps it’s going to the gym or going on a walk. Having time in quiet to read, think, and/or journal. Being able to make a healthy breakfast and still have time to prepare for work and begin your day doing the things that are most important.
Margin in your schedule means your day has breathing room.
And that breathing room means two things: (1) that you can set aside time for doing the things that are most important; and (2) that there is space to account for the unexpected. That’s what Margin is all about: it’s space left over.
Conversely, when our schedule lacks any breathing room, it’s like waking up just minutes before having to rush out the door. Grabbing a Pop-Tart without even having the time to put it in the toaster. Then, getting to work and spending 8 or more hours putting out fires and responding to multiple urgent issues.
The difference between a schedule with and without margin is far more than just one of getting up earlier. It’s an internal choice. The choice to take ownership of our time and attention.
The person with margin has taken ownership of their time and has slowly established a routine that allows for health and breathing room. The other person is, honestly, a bit out of control.
I love how Dan Mall replaced the phrase “I don’t have time” with “it’s not a priority” for his internal dialog:
Recently, I’ve tried to stop saying, “I don’t have time.” It insinuates that I’m a helpless victim to the all-powerful stream of hours that mightily passes me by. It’s easy to adopt an “Oh well” attitude to what you’re giving up. It authorizes my apathy.
Instead, I’ve replaced it with the phrase, “That’s not a priority.” Suddenly, I’ve taken control of my own decisions. I’ve taken responsibility for what I do and don’t do. I’ve added clarity, condemnation, and encouragement, all in 4 short words.
How many people do you know who “don’t have time,” who are “so busy?” Everyone, right? We’re all so busy. None of us have any time.
This has kind-of become the standard answer we all give when people ask us how we’re going. It’s a badge of honor, even.
I used to think that the busier I was, the more important I was. The more people who wanted me to do stuff for them, the more meetings I was invited to, the more projects I was in charge of — all of it was proof that I was important. Each additional commitment was another badge on my uniform to display to those around just how important and responsible I was.
But there’s a difference between having a full schedule and being busy. My schedule is still very much full. But it’s full with all the things I am choosing to do. Such as three meals a day with my family. Time in the evening to read. Time in the morning to write. A whole day of the week where I build trains with my boys and don’t even look at email. A date with my wife every single week.
There are so many ways you can restore (and maintain) breathing room in your schedule. Here are just a few suggestions:
Automate, delegate, and eliminate: Are you spending time doing things that aren’t important or could be done by someone else? Cut those tasks out or delegate them to someone else.
Cut out baseline noise: When you got up this morning, did you check your phone right away? Email, social network timeline, news feed? Did that help you start your day? Do you even remember what you read?
Minimum and Maximum time blocks: Give yourself a minimum amount of time to spend on important things and a maximum amount of time to spend on less-important things. For me, this looks like a minimum of two hours writing and a maximum of 30 minutes doing email. I have a minimum time I spend with my family each day and a maximum time to watch Netflix each week. A minimum amount of time spent reading and a maximum amount of time spent on Social Networks.
Schedule your most important tasks: If you know what is most important for you to do each day, then schedule it.
Single tasking: I’m terrible at this one, but trying to recover. If you look at my computer, there are about 9,000 open windows and browser tabs. In an ideal state, there would be just one open window — the one I’m using to write this text right now.
Single tasking goes beyond just focusing on one software app at a time, it also goes for other activities. For example: don’t check your email when playing ball with your kids. If you’re scheduling your most important tasks, then it’s safe to assume you’ve planned when you’re going to do all the things that are meaningful to you. So, trust your commitments to yourself and single-task the activity you’re doing right now. (This also helps create margin for your mental energy, which we’ll get to in a couple of days.)
One of the quickest ways to take ownership of your schedule is to know what your most important work is. What are the areas of your life that you want to spend time on?
As I mentioned above, set a minimum and a maximum time allowance for different things.
We’re going to dive into this a bit more in March when we talk about showing up every day and hustling to do our best creative work.
But, in short, urgent tasks will always find us, which is why we have to be proactive about making time for the important tasks and then protecting that time.
Urgent issues always come up. If they don’t align with your vision and values, then you can feel comfortable saying no. Like Dan Mall says, “it’s not a priority.”
For me, I have a few areas of my life that I want to spend time developing every single day. These areas are my work, my personal self, and my family.
I have just a couple of things in each area that I want to do every single day. They are my Daily Plumb Lines. They include things such as: pushing the needle forward on at least one of my current projects; spend time away from my desk; Learn something; encourage and serve my wife; give my boys my full attention.
It can be easy to get distracted by something interesting, exciting, or urgent and to not even realize that I’m actually just wasting my time.
Sometimes when I sit down to work, I will feel overwhelmed at all the plates I know I have spinning. I’ll feel unsure about what my next action step should be. This is not an ideal state to be in, but it happens. It’s not the end of the world, and there are ways out.
For the days when I feel as if I have nothing figured out, at least I have clarity about what my Most Important Goals are because the goals don’t change from day to day. Therefore, I can still make meaningful progress on my projects and have a productive day, even if I’m not firing on all cylinders.
Because one thing I can do for certain is to make sure that my next action is something that falls in line with one of my aforementioned Daily Plumb Lines. This way, when I’m feeling overwhelmed or prone to distraction, I have options other than to just zone out and check Twitter.
Moreover, by having these Plumb Lines, it gives me permission to say “no” to much more than distractions. It also gives me permission to say no to opportunities that would encroach on the breathing room in my schedule.
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It’s not easy to restore and maintain breathing room in our schedule. Especially at the beginning, when some of us may need time to transition out of a few current commitments and establish a new routine.
I mentioned some suggestions above, so if any of those sound awesome to you, then go for it.
If you’re not sure where to start, perhaps start by saying no to the next incoming opportunity that doesn’t excite you and line up with what’s most important to you.
Secondly, take a few minutes and do an audit on how you’re spending your free time. When you get home from work, what does your average evening look like? For most Americans, they’re watching more than 5 hours of television every day. Perhaps all you need in order to buy back a bit of margin in your schedule is to sell some of that Netflix time.
When you have margin in your schedule, it’s liberating.
You have the time to get enough sleep, go on a date, have breakfast with your kids, invest in your own mental, spiritual, and physical health, and do your most important work each day.
And best of all, when there is margin in your schedule, you can be available to help and serve. You can respond to the needs of others without it disrupting your whole life.
Hello friends, and welcome to another edition of Fantastic Friday.
The past several days have been fun as we’ve been diving into the topic of Margin. In case you missed it, there is a running list of all the articles and podcasts related to Margin over here on this page. There is still quite a bit we’re going to cover. Such as, Monday’s article where we’re going to dive into the topic of Time Stewardship.
Have an awesome weekend.
— Shawn
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Some friends of mine, Joel Sorge and Caleb Culver, are kickstarting an incredible take on the Audio Bible. Their project is to create an audio Bible for the book of Psalm, composing original music and videography for each of the 150 Psalms. I think it looks and sounds awesome; I’m already in as a backer.
This episode of the Seanwes Podcast is excellent. Some great advice here about just how important it is to be able to say “no” to certain opportunities and commitments so that you can create the space to focus on that which is most important.
Old workflow habits die hard — I’ve been using the defaul email apps on OS X and iOS for ages. But for iOS I thought I’d give Outlook a try, and it’s pretty awesome. The design is simple and clean. The two inboxes (“Focused” and “Other”) are super helpful, as is the file browser. I don’t use the Calendar much, but it’s well done.
Way back in 2007, when I first set up shawnblanc.net, my motivation was a bit narcasstic. This site was going to be “Shawn Blanc on the Net”. It was meant to be my spot where I could write about whatever I wanted.
I’m all for having a place where, as a writer, I can write freely about the topics that interest me most and the ideas that have me most puzzeled. However, something I’ve learned is that to do work that matters, it can’t be mostly about me. It has to be mostly about you, the reader, the customer, the listener, the subscriber.
Oftentimes, the hardest work is the work of helping other people. It’s easy for us to hide behind the safety of saying that the work we are doing is for ourselves. Because then, when someone doesn’t like it or agree with it, we can shrug it off because we made it for ourselves. But when we say “here, this is for you“. That’s when it gets frightening. Becasue, what if they don’t care? What if they don’t want what we have to offer.
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In other news, this week on Shawn Today, I had had special guest, Mike Schmitz, join the show to talk about how Margin Enables Hustle. Over on The Sweet Setup we picked Television Time as the best app for tracking TV shows. And on Tools & Toys, Josh Ginter posted an epic review of the Olympus E-M5 Mark II.
As announced on Monday, for the next couple weeks we are diving deep on a specific topic: Margin.
Margin is breathing room.
It’s the opposite of overwhelm, overload, and overtime.
Margin means having some cash in the bank at the end of the month. It means having time during your day to spend on the things that are most important.
When we have this breathing room, it opens up a world of possibilities. Because when you have margin, you have the space to choose to be proactive instead of reactive.
We all need margin in our lives. From the stay-at-home parent, to the retiree, the 9-5 store clerk, the business executive, the pizza delivery guy, and the independent entrepreneur.
The reason we all need margin is because margin equals health.
Breathing room is good for our finances, our physical energy, our mental energy, and more. (Which, by the way, I dive into this topic much more in the free video presentation I put together. You can get it here.)
Today what I want to talk about is how Margin enables Intentional Living. You’re probably already putting the pieces together, so let’s continue…
Intentional living means being proactive in all areas of your life.
Jim Rohn said that “your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.”
I would also add that success comes about through diligence, hard work, and skill development.
Over the coming days and weeks we’ll continue to talk more about diligence, hard work, and skill development. But, in short, it takes intentional practice in order to be “successful” in each area of your life.
We know this is true for the athlete or the musician. Each day, the best athletes in the world train their hardest. Each day, the best musicians in the world practice and grow their skills.
The same principle of intentional practice holds true for every area of our life and any skill we wish to develop.
To reach the levels of success that are important to us (in our health, marriage, finances, vocation, side-projects, etc.) it takes intentional practice and development.
For a thriving marriage, you need to do something each day to strengthen your relationship with your spouse. The best writers in the world write every single day. One of the most sound financial investment strategies is to invest early and often.
Thus, intentional living is simply dedicating time each day to strengthen the most important areas of your life.
If you are doing that, then you’ll see success in those areas. If you’re not, then you won’t see success. It’s as simple as that.
So many of us “know” this truth. But so few of us do anything about it. Because it’s not microwaveable. It’s not easy to get started. It’s not easy to keep it up.
To be intentional — to live a focused life — takes a few things:
These things boil down to simply having honesty, clarity, and a bias toward action. And it all gets just a little bit easier when you have breathing room in your life. Which is why margin enables intentional living. Margin enables you to live a focused life.
In The Focus Course, the whole first module is focused on restoring margin to your life. We take 7 days and touch on topics such as personal integrity, relationships, creative imagination, finances, simplicity, and more.
The reason is because when you have a little bit of breathing room, it makes everything else that much easier.
Margin with your thoughts keeps your mental energy strong enough to have the momentum you need to do the work when the time comes.
Margin in your emotions helps you with the motivation you need to do what’s important.
We’ll continue to dive deep on each of the aforementioned areas of margin in the coming weeks.
But for a start, do this: Unsubscribe from something or unfollow someone.
It could be a news feed, an email newsletter, or a person or brand on Twitter or Facebook.
Doing this will give you just a little bit more space. It’s one less thing to deal with in your day, thus giving you some time. And it’s one less area of “consumption”, thus giving you more mental and emotional energy to focus on doing your best creative work.
Also, this is a way to remind yourself that you are in charge of your information diet. You will never do your best creative work if you’re living in the middle of The Echo Chamber.
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Coming Next
Tomorrow, shawnblanc.net members will be getting a podcast conversation between me and my friend Mike Schmitz where we discuss how margin helps you to show up every day and do your most important work.
And on Monday, I’ve got an article for you about time stewardship and how you can get some breathing room in your crazy schedule.
If you want to keep up with all the articles, podcasts, and more that I’m publishing on the topic of margin, I’ve set up this page just for you. You can also get a free video presentation I made that shares an overview of what Margin is, why it’s so valuable, some quick wins for how to regain Margin in your life, and what I do to help maintain Margin in my own life.
Today I’m kicking off something a bit different than I’ve done before on shawnblanc.net.
We’re going to take the rest of January and go deep on one specific topic. I’ve also got February, March, and April planned out as well. Each one with its own topic.
The big picture is that I want to hit on ideas that are especially relevant to the creative entrepreneur. From work-life balance, to tools, to audience building and revenue generation, to building a successful creative business.
This summer we’re on track to have something put together for those who are building a business and/or working to gain traction in their side project. But more on that later.
A few months ago I wrote a 2-part introduction to Margin (part I, part II). In those articles I shared about what Margin in your life looks like and why it’s so important.
In short, Margin equates to breathing room.
Having breathing room in our schedule, finances, emotional energy, and mental energy is paramount. When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables us to breath.
The feedback I received from those articles was extremely positive.
This is a topic that is so relevant to so many areas of our life. Over the past few months, I’ve received hundreds of emails from readers who’s biggest challenges are related to time, clarity, and their business or side-project.
Regarding time and clarity, I heard from many people who feel that they don’t have enough time in the day to do everything they want (or need) to do. I also heard from folks who aren’t sure how best to manage and schedule their time. As well as from people who aren’t sure where they should be focusing their energy.
When we have margin in our schedule, margin in our emotional energy, and margin in our creative energy, it can help tremendously. Moreover, when we lack margin in these areas, it leaves us feeling stressed out, anxious, and overloaded. No fun.
Which is why we’re going to take the next few weeks and dive deep on these topics:
I’ve also got a few podcasts and interviews in the pipe with some good friends and surprise heroes of mine that have so much wisdom to share on this topic.
Keep tabs on everything-margin at this page we’ve set up:
That’s going to be the central repository, so to speak, with links to all the articles, podcasts, and other resources we put out over the coming weeks.
To start things off today, I made a video presentation.
I thought it’d be fun to try something new. And so we put together this short video presentation.
In the video I introduce the idea of Margin, I give you some quick wins for how to restore Margin to your life, and I share some specific things I do in order to keep margin in my life as well as how I stay sane when life gets extra busy.
To get the video, just punch in your email below and you’ll get a link to the page where you can stream or download the presentation.
Welcome to the first edition of Fantastic Friday for 2016.
Fantastic Friday is something I’ve been sending out for the past several months to subscribers of The Fight Spot newsletter, and the response to it has been great. But I decided that it was something I wanted to publish here on the site as well.
In short, it’s a link roundup and other personal notes from me. It’s “Fantastic” because it has just four links in it (get it?).
The links could be anything. From an awesome book, to a quote, new gadget, incredible video, productivity tip, and more. All to give you something interesting, helpful, and fun as you head into the weekend.
Savvy readers have no doubt noticed a change in publishing cadence here on shawnblanc.net over the past year. A lot of that is due to the work I’ve been putting into The Focus Course. But it’s more than just that…
The scope of Blanc Media has grown tremendously in the five years since I quit my job to blog for a living. In 2011 it was just this website and my members-only podcast. But now it’s much more.
A few months ago I was at a crossroads. While I have a world-class crew of contributing writers, editors, and photographers that make Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup possible. But things were at the point where I needed further assistance.
I knew I couldn’t keep up with managing everything that was going on with the business. And so I had to decide to either scale back the work we were doing or to bring on additional help.
After speaking with several close friends and mentors, the choice was clear.
And so, just this week, I hired my first full-time employee.
His name is Isaac and he’ll be helping me with a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that goes in to publishing podcasts, newsletters, and more.
If you want to know more about the motivation behind those choices, and what is next for Blanc Media, you can read my Day One journal entry from early December.
All this said, there are some awesome things in the pipe for this year that I am excited to dive in to. Including a massive update to the scope and perks of the shawnblanc.net membership as well as a new product I’m working on that’s for creative entrepreneurs.
Starting next week, and for the rest of January we’ll be diving deep on the topic of Margin, and I’ve got something fun I’ll be giving away on Monday.
For now, I hope you have an awesome weekend! Enjoy the fantastic links below, and, as always, thanks for reading.
— Shawn
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Cal Newport has quickly become one of my favorite writers and thinkers. His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, was one of the most impactful books I read in 2015.
A few days ago, his new book hit the shelves: Deep Work. The hypothesis behind Newport’s book is this:
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
Amen to that. Now, I’m still working my way through the book, and I will certainly be sharing more about it later this month, but you can bet your britches that this topic is going to be one we come back to many times this year.
As I wrote about in my 2013 article on the rough elements of a successful creative business, I believe that roughly 75-Percent of a successful creative business should be spent on the art itself — the “content”. This is the hard and frightful work of actually making stuff. If you’re not spending the majority of your time actually making something, you’re doing it wrong.
Doing deep work is all about actually making something. It’s about doing the strenuous and difficult work that comes with focus, intentional practice, finding flow, and getting breakthrough in our skills.
+ Bonus reading from Cal: Resolved to Live a Deep Life
On more than one occasion I’ve recommended the Fizzle podcast and their membership. Right now they’re having a huge sale on annual memberships to Fizzle. I highly recommend this site. In fact, Blanc Media just hired its first full-time employee, and one of the ways I’m doing on-the-job training for Isaac is to have him go through the Fizzle courses.
Just what it says on the tin. In GIF format.
I was recently interviewed by Eric Jorgensen for his U-Turn podcast. It’s a show where he interviews folks who started out on one career path and ended up somewhere else entirely.
As you may or may not know, my career started out 15 years ago going to Bible college in Denver. I dropped out after my freshman year, life happened, and now here I am in Kansas City blogging from my basement.
To me, the path from there to here seems totally logical. There was a reason for each major transition in my life, and in retrospect I look back and can see the cause behind each major decision and how that moved me in this direction.
But, when you zoom out to see the big picture, the story seems more curious. So, all that said, if you’re interested in the “Shawn Blanc Origin Story”, or whatever it is, I think you’ll enjoy this show.
curbi gives parents peace of mind; helping manage screen time while providing the best solution so the entire family can enjoy the online world as much as the real world.
curbi is now available on Android as well.
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My thanks to curbi for sponsoring the sites this week. curbi is pretty incredible, especially if you’ve got a family of devices you’d like to help safeguard.
Just a friendly reminder that the special price for 2016’s big update to The Focus Course ends today.
As you know, The Focus Course was just updated with about 50 new videos! It’s awesome.
The Course is normally $350, but right now it’s just $297. And, if you hadn’t noticed, today is the last day it will be available at this price.
If you’re ready to bring your life into focus, I’d like to humbly suggest that right now is an excellent time to sign up. It’s the beginning of the year, there’s a slew of new folks just starting out the course, and, well, the price is right.
When you sign up, you’ll get instant access to everything in the course right away.
Now, of course, you don’t have to start right now. The Focus Course is self-paced and you have lifetime access. Which means you can start The Focus Course whenever you’re ready, and you can move through it at a pace which works best for you.
(In other news, tomorrow we’ll return to our regularly scheduled publishing, as Fantastic Friday will be making its debut appearance here on the website itself. And there are some awesome things in the pipe for the rest of January and February. But more on that next week…)
As you look back on your past year, did you make progress in the areas that matter most to you?
On the scale of “reactive versus proactive”, where do you think you landed in areas such as your best creative work?
What about with your relationships? Your health? Your finances? Your hobbies and down time?
As you learned about during the second session of the free Elements of Focus class, meaningful productivity is all about consistently giving our time and attention to the things that are most important.
Living with diligence and focus is not a personality type — it’s a skill you can learn.
The Focus Course can teach you how to practice that skill and develop it.
Here are five reasons the Focus Course is worth your attention…
As my friend Sean McCabe recently said, there is a lot of free information you can find online about pretty much any topic. But it takes a lot of effort to find it, wade through it, and decipher what is worth your energy and what’s not. But a quality course will bring all of that information together and give you the most important nuggets — it saves you time.
The Focus Course is one of the fastest ways to get clarity and momentum in every area your life. We get right to the golden nuggets that will have the most amount of impact in the least amount of time.
In fact, this is one of the main reasons I created the Focus Course. I wanted something that was direct and to the point. I wanted something that taught you through doing.
In The Focus Course, we get right to the directives — the most powerful next steps that are also right in line with the most common conventional wisdom from these dozens and dozens of resources.
I have read my share of productivity books, blogs, and hacks, but nothing I have read comes close to your work in terms of helpfulness, depth, and significance.
— Tracy Banks, Attorney & Law School Professor
Sometimes, the best way to start making forward progress is to allow someone else tell us what to do.
If you’ve been procrastinating and you need to get clarity and/or momentum, the Focus Course is the easiest next step for you. You just sign up, follow the course, do the assignments, and you’re led along an awesome path.
The Focus Course helped me create a manageable plan of action that worked with my work and lifestyle that I could easily implement.
— Chris Wilson, Teacher
Just over the weekend we had our 1,000th person sign up for the Focus Course.
I have been blown away by the activity, honesty, and just sheer awesomeness of the Focus Course community. There are people from all over the world and all walks of life, who are taking part, introducing themselves, and sharing their ideas and feedback as they go through the course.
You’ll get the support of this community as well as insight and ideas from others as they work their way through the same activities you are doing.
And the community forum is for more than just asking questions and sharing ideas, victories, and struggles. They are also there for the sake of accountability to help you as you work your way through the Course.
You may feel that you don’t have the time to take The Focus Course right now because life is already too busy. However, the busier you are, the more helpful the Course will prove to be.
Because the Course helps you improve how you are spending your time and energy right now, you’ll be able to get an immediate improvement in how you are spending your time and energy.
Just as I realized that I needed to rebalance things, I got the opportunity to take The Focus Course. It couldn’t have come at a better time, and I couldn’t be happier with the results it produced in my life.
— John Voorhies, Attorney, iOS Developer, and Father
The Focus Course is normally $347. However, right now, during this first week of January, the Focus Course is just $297.
This is the cheapest the course will ever be.
I look forward to seeing you inside.
Version 2 of The Focus Course is now available.
I’ve been working on this version for the past several months, and there are some awesome updates.
On the nerdy side, The Focus Course has received several updates to the custom plugins and the membership management.
On the less-nerdy side, the Focus Course now offers (1) group and team licensing and (2) a slew of new videos. Sweet!
Since launching the Course, I’ve spoken with a handful of companies and schools that have expressed interest in group licensing. This is ideal for offices that want their whole staff to go through the Focus Course.
The Focus Course has a strong emphasis on intentionality, self-governance, doing our best work, making progress on a daily basis, etc. While the course assists people with these areas for their “whole self”, the result has a profound effect on people’s work and their work-life balance.
Having your staff or team go through The Focus Course can greatly impact company culture, as well it being an awesome and valuable asset for leaders to sow into their staff.
You can now purchase licenses in bulk, with discounts are available for those purchasing 25 seats or more.
What’s great about the group licensing is that we custom-built a group admin dashboard. If you purchase for a group, then you can manage the licenses of your whole group and track the progress of each member as they make their way through the Course.
If you think the course is something your team would benefit from, shoot me an email and I’d love to help you get set up.
The Focus Course now includes a teaching video for every single day. Plus over a dozen new bonus videos from the Elements of Focus class. You can take the entire course simply by watching the video for each day.
Of course, in addition to each day’s video there is also written content. Which means you can watch or read (or both) your way through the Course. And since The Focus Course was originally created as a written manual, the accompanying text stands on its own.
Version 2 of The Focus Course is $347. However, for the first few days it’s available at an early bird rate of just $297.
When you sign up for the course, you can start right away, or you can wait to begin until a time that’s best for you. Since you’ll get lifetime access to the website there is no rush to start immediately.
The ideal time to start the course is this week. I hope you’ll join me an hundreds of others who’ll be going through the Focus Course to get 2016 off to a great start.
Ready to get your life — or at the very least, your year — in to focus? Sign up for The Focus Course.
When I first launched The Focus Course last June, I did so with a 30-day Money Back Guarantee attached.
When my customers buy the course, it can be hard for them to know what they’re getting in to.
I’ve done my best to be as clear and up-front as possible. There are several testimonies from others who’ve been through the course already. And I’ve done my best to make sure the description text is as clear as possible about what all is in the course. I’ve even got a screencast walkthrough of the website.
As helpful as all of these things are, nothing beats actually seeing and experiencing the course first hand.
But as a customer, to sign up for the course takes a willingness for risk and a level of trust.
Anything I can do toward reducing the risk of my customers is a win. As is anything I can do to help establish trust.
Which is why I offer the refund policy. It takes all the risk off the buyer and puts it on me, the seller.
Which is why, as the seller, offering a guarantee is scary. Especially for a digital product.
A no-questions-asked money-back guarantee means people can effectively steal my product. They could sign up for the course, go through it, download the workbooks, and then ask for their money back.
To offer a money-back guarantee means I’m trusting my customers to do the right thing. I’m the one taking the risk on their behalf, assuming that the vast majority of my customers aren’t going to steal from me. And if I’m the one taking on the risk, then hopefully it means more people will feel safe to sign up for the course.
Now, assuming I was not willing to offer a money-back promise… in that scenario, it would mean I’m assuming the worst of my customers. To be unwilling to offer a money-back guarantee would mean I’m assuming most people will steal from me and that it’s not worth my risk.
Fortunately, that’s just not true.
After more than 6 months and over 900 sales of the Focus Course, less than 3% of people have asked for a refund. And most of them asked within the first 24 hours.
Which is why, for version 2 of the course (that comes out tomorrow morning), I decided to double the timeframe for the money-back guarantee.
Instead of 30 days, it’s now 60.
What I like about 60 days is that it’s enough time for someone to go through the entire course. That may sound crazy, but that’s just what I hope they will do.
I am far less worried about people stealing from me than I am worried that unsure course members will glance at the course contents and assume it’s not for them. Which is why I hope someone will go through the whole course before deciding to ask for a refund. Because if someone commits to doing it, I’m confident they’ll be happy.
Because the power of The Focus Course is not in the table of contents, but in the doing of the material.
It’s Christmas Eve. And as I write this I’m in Colorado with my family.
Which is why today’s Elements of Focus video is all about community.
For those of you who’ve been taking the free class, you’ll know that everything we’ve covered so far — strengthening personal integrity, spending time on what’s most important, recognizing the progress we make and celebrating it, living a focused life, staying healthy when life is super busy, etc. — it is all enhanced through meaningful relationships.
Your whole life is enhanced through relationships.
So here we are. In the midst of the holiday season, where they say it’s better to give than receive. Which is true. But we still need to receive. Relationships are a two-way street, and you need comrades, input, and help. We all do.
Most of us like the idea of giving and providing value. In our work place, in our side-gig, in our down time. We love to help and serve. But what can be hard is asking for help… we don’t naturally seek out mentorship, assistance, and accountability.
That’s what today’s video is about.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch it. Then make a moment to give to someone else by encouraging, helping, supporting, or teaching them. But don’t stop there — I hope you’ll also ask someone for advice, feedback, support, or accountability in an area you need social support in.