Yesterday I shared with you about how I ended up as the marketing and creative director for a large Christian ministry.

In that role I had complete autonomy of my schedule. And I learned quickly that I had to set priorities and boundaries for my time, and choose how my time needed to be spent. If I didn’t then I would literally fail at my job.

Today, as promised, I want to share about some of the things I did to protect my time and stay in control when I was in the midst of a very busy office culture.

Tomorrow, I’m going to share about some of the things I do now to protect my time as a self-employed, work-from-home dad.

First, an aside about meetings…

What’s the deal with meetings?

Just about everyone I know seems to have a strong dislike of meetings.

Even the word… “meeting”… it sounds like “meatloaf” — another thing that many people have a strong dislike of.

I recently received an email from a reader who said one of her biggest challenges related to managing her time was dealing with the deluge of meetings:

I work on a team where there are meetings to prep for the meeting, and then meetings that come from meetings with follow up meetings for action items from the meetings. If you were to look at my outlook calendar you would see I rarely have blocks of time for focused work. It’s more like 30-60 minutes before the next meeting…

When I was the marketing director and leading the in-house design team, I was so afraid of having too many meetings. I treated meetings like fire. I knew they were necessary, but I didn’t want them to get out of control.

I also had to be careful about which meetings I allowed myself to attend. So often I’d spend an hour or two in a meeting with no outcome whatsoever. A literal waste of time. (I quickly learned how to spot time-waster meetings and began avoiding them at all costs.)

But meetings in and of themselves aren’t bad. (Same goes for meatloaf, too, actually. My wife has a meatloaf recipe that’s to die for.)

Meetings can be an invaluable tool for making forward progress.

The problem is that most meetings don’t result in progress.

Or, the forward progress is disproportionate to the length of the meeting.

Or the number of people in the meeting is 5x what it should be.

If you can relate, consider if there is something you can do about it. I’m serious.

What can you do in order to take control of your time at work?

You have a job to do. Are meetings and interruptions standing in the way of doing that job?

As I mentioned yesterday, when I took over as the marketing director, I had to get proactive with my time. That meant doing some crazy things to protect my schedule. And I’ll share those in just a minute.

But the reason it’s so important for you to have control of your schedule is that if you don’t, you’re not doing your job.

If your job is to work on a certain project but you’re also in meetings all the time, respectfully and honestly ask your managers which they’d prefer you do.

You can’t be a maker while working in a manager’s schedule.

Protecting Your Time is Always Applicable

After three years working as the marketing director, I quit that job in 2011 to work from my basement as a writer.

I’ve been writing full time for 5 years now. And so much of what I learned then about protecting my time still applies today.

Except these days, instead of protecting my time from meetings and interruptions, I have to protect it from shiny object syndrome and the incessant tug to peruse Twitter.

The things I learned also apply to my home life. So much of what I learned about being productive in the midst of a busy job also helped me with being productive once I became a dad. (Which, by the way, is something I talk about at length in the Time Management class.)

If you can get hold of a few basic skills for protecting and managing your time then you can use them in all sorts of seasons of life.

A Few Tricks

As promised, here a few of the tricks I used as the marketing director to thrive in the midst of that wild and crazy job position.

• I would (politely) turn down meeting requests, even with people who were my superiors. When I was invited to a meeting I always tried to find out what it was about. And sometimes I’d ask to be excused if I felt that my presence there wouldn’t be valuable to the group nor to my own job.

• I got one of those super-dorky bluetooth earpieces so I could call my mom more often. We had three different campuses. My office was at campus C but most meetings were at campus A. I drove back and forth often. And, in order to make the most of that 15 minute drive, I got a bluetooth earpiece so I could more easily have conversations while commuting. It was an excellent way to “meet” with someone over the phone. And it was great for catching up with my folks on a regular basis.

• I’d schedule meetings with nobody. This was a trick I learned from someone wise. He would schedule meetings with nobody. What I mean is that he was always getting meeting requests. So, on his weekly schedule were two blocks of open time set aside for meetings. When someone would ask to meet, they would get slotted into the next available time.

• I even scheduled meetings with myself. I needed at least 2 hours every day to work without distraction. So… I scheduled it. Then, if someone wanted to meet with me during that time I could tell them I already had something booked (because I did).

• I worked from home on Fridays. Not only did I need 2 hours a day of uninterrupted time, I also needed one whole day of deep work. This was when I would do the sort of tasks such as planning, strategizing, etc. that should take a couple of hours minimum to really make meaningful progress.

It seems like a pompous thing to say “I’m taking the whole day on Friday to work from home. Nobody call me.” But, it was the right thing to do. It was necessary.

If I hadn’t taken time to focus on things such as planning and budgeting then my department would have ended up in big trouble and I’d have been out of a job.

I had to take that time so I could focus on the important work and plan for our long-term goals and objectives.

When it comes to office culture and meetings, there’s this sense that if you’re not in the meeting your missing out. We think people who skip out on meetings are slacking off. When, for all we know, maybe they’re actually getting real work done. ?

After I took the role as marketing director, I decided early on that I wanted the results of my work and the culture of my team to speak for my ability rather than my meeting attendance record.

Looking busy and being seen is a mighty poor substitute for doing work that matters.

Sadly, meetings and busywork are what so much of our corporate culture values these days. Because it’s what’s easiest to quantify in the short term.

* * *

Now that I work for myself, I have new tactics. But the ideas behind my tactics are still the same.

Next, I want to share with you what I do nowadays to keep in control of my time.

It was April of 2008. My wife, Anna, and I were driving to St. Louis from Kansas City.

Somewhere in the middle of nowheresville on I-70, I got a phone call.

There are a few moments in my life that I look back to as being keystone moments. Small events that signified and connected to something big.

This phone call was one of those.

Before I continue, let me give a little bit of context…

Just a few weeks earlier, my boss at the time had informally offered me her job as the Marketing Director for a large Christian ministry. We had met in her office where she told me she was quitting and asked me if I was interested in taking over her job.

The chance to be a leader? The chance to have my own office? The chance to pick my own hours!? You bet I was interested.

However, before I could “officially” be offered the job I had to be vetted and interviewed.

The vetting process took about a week. They had me come to a meeting where they asked me lots of questions. And they had a meeting without me but where they talked about me and the job I was up for.

I had no clue if they would actually offer me the job or not.

I was just a kid. Or at least I felt like one. I was a mere 27 years old. Everyone in those meetings had at least 10 or 20 years on me. Plus, I was a college drop out — I had quit after my freshman year to go play drums instead.

The final interview meeting was at the same time I was driving to St. Louis. They said they’d call me. And that’s the phone call I got.

I was ready. If they offered me the job, I knew I wanted to accept.

Though the job would mean more work, more hours, more responsibility, and more unknowns, I knew it would be a ton of fun. I knew it would be a huge opportunity to learn.

Well, they did offer me the job.

For the next three years I served in that role as the marketing director.

It was a trial by fire, and I loved it. The job, the team I was privileged to work with, the work we did — I’m so proud of it all.

I learned so much during those three years. I learned about management, team dynamics, budgeting, leadership, communication, marketing, audience building, and more.

But what I learned about most was time management and decision making.

I had to learn the hard way how to get good at spending my time.

I discovered very quickly that I alone had to be the one to take ownership of my time and attention.

I’d spent the previous 27 years of my life being told how to spend my time. From childhood, going to school, having a job — everywhere I went there was someone telling me when to show up, what to do, when to take lunch, when to go home, when to go to bed, etc.

But suddenly, in my new job as the marketing director, I had complete autonomy of my schedule.

I quickly learned that I had to set the priorities, the boundaries, and choose how my time needed to be spent. If I didn’t then I would literally fail at my job.

I’ll say that again:

If I hadn’t been proactive about taking control of my time, then I would have failed at my job.

This meant I did crazy things to protect my time.

And now that I work for myself, I have to be even more proactive with my time (though not quite as crazy).

I’ll share more about all of that tomorrow.

For now, think about this: Being in control of our time is a lot like keeping a clean house. A few hours of hard work over the weekend can transform a cluttered home into a peaceful space. The challenge is in keeping the home tidy on a daily basis (especially if you’ve got kids).

So too with how we spend our time. Once we get that initial grasp of control, the challenge becomes how to stay in control (again, especially if you’ve got kids). Staying ahead of the whirlwind. Keeping the time to do meaningful work even though our entire office culture seems to thrive on incessant meetings.

Next, I want to share some of the tricks I used as the marketing director to thrive in the midst of that wild and crazy job position.

Fall is by far and away my favorite time of year. There’s awesome about the combination of crisp weather, a lit candle, a hot drink, and a blank page to write on.

And here we are. It’s November! Except I’m not ready for it.

I feel as if I’m standing at the entrance to a tunnel and I can see 2016 coming down the track. But it’s moving too quickly for me and I feel unprepared and, honestly, a little bit anxious.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the holiday season is busy enough in its own right. My wife and I will be hosting family here in Kansas City for the former, and we’ll be driving to Colorado for the latter. I can’t wait.

But, in addition to the holidays and family time, November and December are the two biggest months of the year for Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup. Our website traffic and revenue during these months will be roughly 3 times that of any other month of the year. And we’re doing all we can to make the most of it. Over on Tools & Toys we just put up our annual Christmas Catalog post, and we also have a massive photography guide that is coming out soon. And over on The Sweet Setup we’re just finishing up a new ebook that we expect to publish in a week from now.

On top of that, I am making some huge improvements to The Focus Course for a “re-launch” of the course that will go live on January 1. Later this month I’m going back to the studio to record 50 new videos. 40 of them are for the Focus Course and 10 of them will be for a new training series I’m working on — kind of like an introduction to the Focus Course.

I’m sharing all this because you probably feel in a similar situation.

• You’ve got several work-related projects (all of which are important).
• You’ve got some personal projects (all of which you really want to make progress on).
• You’ve got several books you want to read (all of which look awesome).
• And you want to spend as much time with your spouse and kids as possible (especially with the holidays coming up).

You feel the tug of wanting to work on too many things at once and not knowing which to choose. This in and of itself can be stressful. It also can lead to procrastination and paralysis due to uncertainty and indecisiveness, which just compounds the issue even further.

“How am I supposed to get all this done?” You’re asking.

That is a great question. And you’re not the only one asking it.

By far and away, one of the most common challenges I hear from people is their challenge of having too much to do. Too many spinning plates. Too many important tasks. Too many areas of responsibility.

For me, I know that this current November and December are going to be an intense couple of months. It’s a perfect storm of holidays, family, and business opportunities. I don’t mind putting in extra hours to get all the work done now, because I know that this is not the norm for me. Come January and February, my workload will return to normal. This is the ebb and flow of work.

Sometimes, however, the overwhelming business is a sign that something’s broken. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself if it’s because you’re on the edge of doing something awesome or is it life showing you that something needs to be cut out.

• If the latter — you’re overwhelmed and you know something’s got to give — then do this: Take inventory of where you’re spending the bulk of your time and energy (not where you wish you were spending it, but where you’re actually spending it). Now ask yourself what can be subtracted to give your calendar, your mind, and your emotions some breathing room.

• If the former — if you’re on the edge of breakthrough in a project — then sometimes the answer is to keep working and just hold on and persevere for the season. But don’t persevere to the detriment your health and relationships.

When you’re in an intense and busy season, what’s important is to keep your sanity and health. This way you ensure that you are actually making progress every day and not just suffering under the weight of being busy. This will also help ensure that when the busy season is over, you don’t hit a wall and get sick or depressed.

When life is at its busiest, is when it’s all the more important to be overly diligent and intentional with how you spend your time.

That said, here’s how I’m staying focused in my busy season of life:

1. Making sure my day is filled with intentional work. Step one is knowing what to do and having a plan of when I’m going to do it. This is so important, that I’ve actually been spending more time managing my time. The days can so quickly get away from me that I’m upping my intentionality to make sure my daily and weekly schedule is providing me with the time I need to do the most important work.

If I’m mostly in a reactive state — giving my attention primarily to the incoming inboxes of email and Twitter — then chances are I’m wasting time. Which is why I’ve been spending even less time than usual on email and Twitter…

1. Dialing back on Twitter usage. I love Twitter. It’s a great place for conversations, dialog, and finding cool stuff. But it’s not where I do my aforementioned most important work.

Which is why, for the past month, I’ve been using Buffer and Edgar as tools to help me post to Twitter. And then I’ve been setting aside time to jump in and reply to any conversations or questions. So far it’s been working out well as a way for me to stay engaged and active on Twitter while not getting too easily sucked in to the Black hole of the real time web and YouTube fail compilations.

For me, this is just about the only “noisy and distracting area” that I have left to dial back. I don’t read the news. I don’t have Facebook. And I’ve hit pause on my RSS reading while I work my way through my current stack of books (which now includes 3 more since I took that picture).

1. My “Now” Page. This is something I picked up from Derek Sivers, who created a page on his website, simply titled “Now”. On there he listed out the few things he is most focused on. Not just work-things, but life, hobbies, etc. It serves as a personal reminder to him about where he wants to be focusing his time as well as a public statement to others about what he’s doing (and what he’s not doing).

I love this idea. I’m a big proponent of what I call meaningful productivity. Which just means you’re actually spending your time doing the things that you want to do. The problem is that most of us spend our time doing what we don’t want to do — usually just by default. We forget, we’re tired, or whatever, and so we just default into something (such as mindless email checking) that is not on our “now” list. The Now page can serve as a plumb line for you.

And the other cool thing about having a publicly available “Now” page is that it gives a sense of accountability. You’ve told the world what’s important to you and how you’re spending your time, and now you need to keep that commitment.

1. Recognizing progress. This is huge. When you’re down in the thick of it, one of the best ways to keep your momentum going is to recognize and celebrate the progress you make each day. I use Day One because it’s awesome. And at the end of the day I’ll write down the small wins from my day.

2. Health. This is the one that goes out the window the fastest for me. Which is unfortunate, because it’s also the one that matters the most. A good night sleep, a diet that gives you energy, and some regular out-and-about exercise is so good for you.

All these things come together to help give space to think, to breath, and to focus on doing what’s most important.

But there’s more to it than just another listicle of tips and tricks and hacks for being awesome.

It ultimately comes down to taking ownership of your time and attention.

If you regularly find that you’re not able to do your best work in this season of life, ask yourself whose fault that is. Sometimes things are outside of our control. But more often than not, there is something we can do about it.

The person who is frustrated at how long it’s taking to write their book, yet is watching a few hours of television every day, may want to reconsider how they’re spending their evening.

When you take ownership of your time and attention, everything changes. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

* * *

And I would be remiss if I didn’t take a chance to mention just how helpful and powerful The Focus Course can be in this area.

I designed the Focus Course to guide you along a simple path that starts out fun and easy and then builds into something resulting in deep and lasting change. The course enables you to experience deep satisfaction in work and in life by making meaningful progress every day to accomplish that which is most important.

If what I’ve written about today hits home for you, but you don’t know where to start… then start here.

My friend, Sean McCabe, recently published a podcast episode talking about how to send valuable and relevant emails.

But the show was about much more than just email.

For me, the most valuable takeaway from Sean’s podcast was this:

“Relevancy is more important than recency.”

The context was that with email, what makes it so powerful is not the ability to send a recent message to 1,000 people right now. Rather, that you can send one single relevant message to one person at just the right time.

Sean posted his show almost a month ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

It pairs perfectly with another idea I’ve been chewing on: a business model that (surprise!) is based on providing the most amount of value to the most amount of people.

Which begs the question: What’s more valuable for your content: relevancy or recency?

Put another way, is the relevance of your content based on the content itself or the timestamp?

The Bias Toward “Fresh”

Be careful when you presuppose that the newer something is, the more relevant it is. While it’s true for many news sources, it’s not true of all content. Not even all the content published on the Web.

Our bias toward fresh content is a huge part of why we prefer Twitter over books, and TL;DR over long-form.

The real-time web is awesome, but it’s not the only source of information. Especially not so if we’re seeking to gain a deep understanding of a topic and expand our knowledge in an area.

Twitter is fine in its own right, but it’s a mighty bloodless substitute for learning.

Relevancy vs Recency for you, the reader

Last month I read Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

The book is not new — it’s three years old. But the contents in it were exactly what I needed to hear right now.

There were two huge takeaways from the book that gave me some clarity and insight into the exact challenges I’m facing right now in my business. Despite the fact that the contents of the book were not new, they were still very relevant.

For a book, we don’t really think too much about new-ness equating to relevancy. In fact, a three-year-old book is still pretty new. But for the (real-time) web, three years sounds like an eternity. When we go to a website, we want to know what is fresh and new — we assume that the newer it is the more relevant it is.

Obviously for a news website such as CNN, et al., the newest content is almost always the most relevant. But what about for the millions of other sites that don’t publish news? That are writing and publishing things without a shelf life?

hen you recommend a book, you don’t say “it’s old, but still good”. Yet, if you recommend an old website article (and by old I mean anything not written in the pas 12 months), it’s not uncommon to mention that it wasn’t written in the past 24 hours.

We have so many people writing incredible things on the web — it’s time to stop using the time stamp as the primary qualifier for relevancy.

And, for those of us who are creating great content for the web, it’s time to think more about how we can keep that content relevant for months and years to come.

Relevancy vs Recency for you, the writer

Long-time readers of shawnblanc.net will know that my pattern for writing has long been about “recency.”

The long-form software and hardware reviews I used to write were primarily valuable because of how “fresh” they were. And while many of those reviews still stand today, it’s only because they’re interesting and they can serve as a point of reference. They are’t exactly helping solve any problems or challenges you’re facing right now (that is, unless you’re considering buying a used G4 PowerBook.)

One down side to a Recency-Over-Relevancy mindset when it comes to content production is that it means much of what you create has a very short shelf life.

Consider if the content model you’re building on is focused on “new-ness.” If so, then it means that if you don’t have something recent, you don’t have anything at all.

I know this because it’s exactly how I approached the writing here on shawnblanc.net for the first six years. This website started in 2007 as a place where I could write about technology news.

But I’ve realized that “new-ness” is not the long-term game I want to play here. Even on Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup, we are working to build a content strategy that’s not primarily dependent on “new-ness”. (But I’ll share more bout that another day.)

* * *

The question I continue to re-visit is this: What can I do that will be the most helpful and provide the most value to you, the reader?

To peel the curtain back just al little bit, I know that the answer to that question is something far beyond some weekly emails, podcast episodes, and blog posts.

While the regular writing and podcasting I’m doing here is a critical component that keeps things moving, there are a LOT of past articles I’ve written and podcast episodes I’ve recorded that are still immensely valuable. Yet they’re buried underneath that reverse waterfall.

Someone new to this site is probably interested in what’s happening right now, but they are also likely to find immense value in the articles I’ve already written. Such as the those from earlier this summer regarding productivity and diligence, or the ones from last year about sweating the details in our work.

While I don’t have anything firmly in the works, yet, I do have a few ideas about what I could do to improve the relevancy of my content in a way that doesn’t put recency as the primary metric.

Some ideas include:

• A redesign of the shawnblanc.net website that puts less emphasis on the reverse-waterfall blog and more emphasis on the most valuable content I’ve produced, regardless of when it was published.
• Going through the archives here on shawnblanc.net and putting together certain posts and articles into a series around specific topics (such as writing, creativity, productivity, entrepreneurship, workflows, etc.)
• Using the awesomeness of Active Campaign to offer training and relevant content on-boarding via email.

Basically, I’m looking at better ways of packaging and presenting all of my writing and podcasting into products and training materials (both free and paid) that can be as valuable as possible to you regardless of if you’ve been a long-time reader or this is the first article you’ve read of mine.

* * *

To wrap this up, I want to thank all of you who support this site, show up to read, listen to the podcast, and share your thoughts and feedback. Many of you are brand new. (Welcome!) And many more of you have been around for months and years.

Thanks for reading. And thanks for letting me learn and iterate in public. I think it’s more fun that way, and I hope you do, too.

You are awesome.

— Shawn

P.S. If you want to stay in the loop with what I’m working on, you should join newsletter.

Just punch in your info below to get on the list. Every week I send out a short list of links to the best articles related to creativity, entrepreneurship, and the internet.

As I write this, I’m preparing to spend a week in the mountains. And, in fact, by the time you read this I’ll already be in the mountains.

Up until this point, the entirety of 2015 I spent working on The Focus Course. Now that it has shipped, I’m taking some time away from work.

When you rest well, it should leave you feeling recharged and re-energized, ready to get back to work. I love to work. I love creating things and connecting with people. But work needs and ebb and and a flow.

I’ve discovered that I work best with seasons where my focus is solely on the idea and task at hand. Where I eat, sleep, and breath one particular project. And then, I need time away from work. To give my mind space to breath.

Perhaps you can relate, or perhaps you think I’m crazy, but taking time off isn’t easy for me. My tendency is to work, work, work.

Though I don’t let my work time come before my family time, I do have to remind myself that even my working hours aren’t all about “creating”. It took me several years before I realized it was just as important for me to read, study, and learn as it was for me to write, make, and ship.

In this short and sweet interview with Cameron Moll, he shares about his work and life as a designer and the founder of Authentic Jobs. I love this quote:

I was always building stuff with my hands growing up. Like always. Wood projects, go-karts, radio-controlled airplanes, that sort of thing. I think we underestimate sometimes just how much those kinds of activities, the ones that seem completely unrelated to our careers, play a vital role in shaping who we become and what we do with our working lives. The tools I use now in business are totally different from those I used in my garage twenty years ago, but in the end they’re all the same. They’re just tools that facilitate synthesis and creativity. And ten or twenty years from now, those tools will be totally different again. Mastery of creation and composition is much more important than mastery of tools.

I love that sentiment: “Mastery of creation and composition is much more important than mastery of tools.”

Here, Cameron is talking about the tools we use to build things. But I believe that this could also be applied to our workflows and our lifestyles as well. That mastery of creation is much more important than mastery of workflows.

We often ask people about the tools they use to get the job done. We’re curious about their work routines, their schedule, their priorities, etc.

But we rarely ask them what they are doing to stay sharp. What do they do in their off time? What hobbies to they keep? What does their family life look like? How do they spend their free time?

Who we are and what we do when we are away from our most important work is just as important as the energy and focus we give to doing that work. Because we are who we are, everywhere we are. Eating a healthy meal, having a good night’s sleep, telling our spouses that we love them — all these things impact the quality of the work we produce.

The lines between work and life are much more blurry than we like to imagine.

Another article I read just recently is this story about how William Dalrymple writes his books.

It takes Dalrymple 3-4 years to write a book. The first 2-3 years are spent reading, researching traveling. Then, the final year is spent writing.

Dalrymple shares about how his writing year is “completely different from the others”. He stops going out much. He gets up at 5:30 every morning to write. He works out in his back shed where there is no internet connection. He doesn’t look at his cell phone or email until after lunch.

In the final year I go from a rambling individual to almost autocratically, fixatedly hardworking and focused and that is the one discipline of being a writer. One year in four or five you are completely eaten up by the book. If it’s working, you’re really dreaming it, it’s not a figure of speech, it’s a literal thing. You’re harnessing the power of your subconscious.

As artists we so often hear about these seasons of other artists’ lives: the intense, focused, eat-sleep-work seasons. And we think that this is what life is like all the time.

But it can’t be. Dalrymple couldn’t spend a year focused on his writing without the preceding 2-3 years of reading, researching, and traveling.

You have to be inspired first before you can create.

You have to learn before you can teach.

You have to experience before you can share.

There is no shame in taking time “off” of your work, in order to learn something, experience something, and be inspired.

This is the ebb and flow of work. This is having multi-year cycles where we grow in our mastery of creation beyond just mastery of tools and workflows. This is why resting well is so valuable and why learning, thinking, and discovering cannot be underrated.

 

* * *

 

P.S. Just a side note to mention that the challenges of work-life balance, fighting a sense of overwhelm, and giving ourselves space to think and margin for thought are all foundational topics to The Focus Course. If this article hits home for you, I bet you would find immense value in taking 40 days to work your way through the course.

Just because you know about something doesn’t mean you do anything about it. There are overweight dietitians, sleep-deprived sleep researchers, broke business coaches, and angry counselors.

Common knowledge is not the same as common action.

* * *

The balance between our work and personal lives isn’t so much a perfect balancing act. It’s more of a zig and a zag. We spend a season of time focusing on a particular area of life, then we pull back and spend a season focusing on something else. We work hard at the office and then we go on vacation with the family.

It has been three weeks since the Focus Course launched. And now that this chapter of my life is closed, in the zig-zag of life I am taking some time off during the next month to be with and visit family as well as to celebrate 10 amazing years of marriage with my wife.

And during this down-time I’ll be thinking about what’s next.

* * *

This morning I was leafing through the notebook I used to jot down most of my research notes related to The Focus Course.

I came across one page, right in the middle of my notebook, that had several unordered bullet points on the importance of a focused life. These are some of the original ideas that later got expounded on as part of the course. I want to share them here with you.

• If you want to do everything, be everywhere, and control everything you’re more likely to do, be, and control nothing.
• Energy and motivation go further when they’re focused / channeled into a specific area.
• Clearly defined boundaries empower us to do better work. Hence the value in having daily routines. Also boundaries for how we will not spend our time, money, energy, etc. We have a finite amount of motivation, so keep in mind that if we commit to something new then it will need energy from another area of life.
• Goals and action plans allow all your energy to know where to take aim. Your motivation has a path to run on.
• Quality relationships are critical! Get around people with a sense of humor, who are high performers, who are fun and funny, and who are generous.
• We need humor and enjoyment in life.
• If you feel that you don’t have enough time, realize you have all the time you’re going to get. It’s impossible to be motivated when operating under other people’s unreasonable timezones and the tyranny of the urgent. Time is infinitely more valuable than money.

I have such a propensity to want to do everything, be everywhere, and control everything. But I know that the times I’ve done my best work are the times when I had one specific goal and one main project that I was focused on.

Reading my own notes this morning was a reminder to myself that just because I know a little bit about focus and diligence, doesn’t mean I’m immune to ever being un-focused. As I take some time to think and plan for what is next, I also need to remember to take my own advice: clearly defined boundaries empower; life needs humor and joy; I have all the time I’m going to get.

If you’re also slowing down this summer to think about what’s in store for the next season of life, instead of trying to figure out how you’re going to do it all, maybe try to do one thing really well.

Every now and then an idea just hits you like a ton of bricks.

Have you ever experienced that?

You’re reading something, or listening to something, or driving to work and thinking about nothing in particular, but then a couple of dots connect in your head and kapow!

As I’m writing this, I’ve got one particular idea in mind that I want to share. Something that connected for me several years ago and has had a profound effect on me ever since.

It’s the idea of living like nobody else.

I first heard this phrase 10 years ago when my wife and I were newlyweds.

We were young and living on a humble missionary salary. I brought several thousand dollars of consumer debt to the marriage because when I was single I’d owned a truck that I didn’t know how to stop buying things for.

During our first six months of marriage, we focused very intently on getting our finances in order. We read Dave Ramsey’s book, and that helped us tremendously with getting a budget and building the courage to tackle our debt.

Something Dave Ramsey says repeatedly in his book is that if you will live like nobody else, later you can live like nobody else.

His point is that it’s time to stop living like a child. Assess your own life and be mature and intentional about how you spend your finances.

He writes about how so many lower- and middle-class Americans try to live as if they were millionaires: driving new and expensive cars, living in large homes, eating at fancy restaurants, etc.

However, most real millionaires actually live like middle-class (this is what the book The Millionaire Next Door is all about). The average millionaire’s annual household much lower than you may think (around $150K). However, since they live far beneath their means, they pay with cash, and they invest early and often, they’ve accumulated enough wealth to be worth $1,000,000 or more.

* * *

This metric of living differently than most people goes far beyond just how you spend your money. It’s also an excellent metric for how to spend your time, energy, and attention.

I love how my friend Aaron Mahnke said it just yesterday in a tweet:

Do as much as you can with as little as you can for as long as you can.

— Aaron Mahnke (@amahnke) June 17, 2015

Lifestyle creep and workflow creep put a ceiling on our potential. They rob us of our much-needed resources of time, money, and energy.

Coming back, this is the idea I wanted to share with you today. The idea of living like nobody else. Of being careful of lifestyle and workflow creep (especially when it’s rooted in dissatisfaction).

Did you know…?

• The average American spends 5 hours or more watching television and 2 hours on social media every day.
• The average retiree at age 65 has only enough in savings to pay for less than 2 years worth of living expenses.
• One of the most common regrets of the dying is that they worked too hard and neglected their relationships, values, and even their own happiness.
• And who knows how many men and women have a dream to start a business, write a novel, paint a painting, or build something meaningful, but never try.

Unless our hope is in the lottery, it’s a logical impossibility that we can waste our money and end up wealthy. The same is true for our time and attention.

As I’ve written about before, unfortunately, most of us aren’t surrounded by focused and successful individuals who can set an example for us and remind us to keep on keeping on. We have few examples of intentional and considered living. However, we probably have plenty of examples of how to watch TV, check Facebook, and live above our means.

What then if you lived like nobody else?

• Don’t spend hours each day watching television or scrolling through social networks.
• Don’t let your work life dominate over family time, personal values, or happiness.
• Don’t ignore the importance of investing over the long-run and planning for the future.
• Live as far below your means as is reasonable, and don’t derive your happiness or self-worth by the fanciness of the things you own.
• Don’t let laziness or busywork keep you from building something meaningful.
• Don’t assume you need a better tool in order to do better work.

It’s funny. Simply doing the opposite of what most people do can actually open up many opportunities for you to do meaningful work.

* * *

It’s hard to change. We fear it. We get overwhelmed by all the areas we want to see change in. We get paralyzed by the options for how we could change. Or we’ve been there and done that, and since it didn’t work out that one time we’ve thrown in the towel for good.

Here’s the truth: You can change.

When Anna married me, I was an habitual spender. For years had been living paycheck to paycheck; I had thousands of dollars in consumer debt and no real grasp on how to consistently live within my means. But now we meet with and counsel others who are in debt and struggling to keep their finances under control, and we help them make changes to their spending habits.

* * *

I realize that this all sounds so serious. Like we’re still little kids who don’t know how to behave. Hey, you! Watch less TV. Turn off Facebook. Do your homework.

Yes. It is serious. But that’s because it matters. It’s also awesome and fun. Getting ahold of your life is liberating to say the least.

Of course, the choice is yours to make.

Ask yourself if you would prefer to be up-to-date on all the latest TV shows and summer movies, or if you want to create something every day?

Do you want to stay in the loop with the lives of your Facebook friends, or do you want to help your kids build a fort or do their homework?

Do you want to squeeze in one more thing at the office, or do you want to go on a date with your spouse?

Now, I realize all these options aren’t continually at odds with one another — they’re not mutually exclusive. And it’s not that TV, Facebook, and late nights at the office are always “bad” all of the time.

Life is a messy, zig-and-zag balancing act. Rarely, if ever, is it a state of perfect harmony.

I’m being dramatic to make a point. Because I know that in my own life, and in the lives of my close friends and family, if we aren’t careful and intentional then over time the natural trajectory of life begins to move downward.

Focus, diligence, relationships, wealth, art — anything at all that is worth pursuing — is a moving target.

And we are guaranteed to face resistance when we take that path of doing our best creative work, living a healthy and awesome life, and building meaningful relationships.

In short, if you want to watch more TV, the universe won’t bother you. If you want to do work that matters, it’s going to be a fight.

* * *

Today’s article is the fourth in my countdown to The Focus Course, which launches on June 23.

For me, this one is perhaps one of the most personal yet. To be transparent, I am extremely passionate about keeping that healthy balance where I’m able to do my best creative work while also having thriving relationships with my close friends and family. It’s top-of-mind for me pretty much every single day.

If this article hits home for you as well, then I believe you will love the course.

As I wrote above, you can get breakthrough. You can do work that matters, build momentum in your personal integrity, establish habits that stick, bring a healthy balance between your work and personal life.

And the Focus Course can be the secret weapon to help you get moving in that direction. The course leads you along a path that starts out simple and fun and culminates in deep and lasting impact.

I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on yourself and signing up for the Focus Course this coming Tuesday.

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some stories and testimonies of those who’ve already taken the course and how it impacted their life.

You can now sign up for The Focus Course right here.