Question: Are you satisfied with the level of success in your business? Subscriber Osman isn’t. He asks: How old were you when you first started seeing success in your online business ventures? I turned 31 this year and the older i get the more depressed and demotivated i feel. The “time’s running out” kinda feeling. […]
Continue readingThe thing that originally attracted me to marketing, email and copywriting was the dream of “passive income.” I loved the idea of creating products and setting up automated email sequences that would increase my income and give me more free time. So how close to that dream is my current daily reality? inquires marketer-turned-software developer […]
Continue readingOne of my subscribers has a side hustle running a “learn to code” website. And he’s feeling frustrated about making the jump to working for himself. He writes: I struggle a lot with managing time. I work full time as a programmer and the business (iLoveCoding) does not make enough to cover my personal expense. […]
Continue readingBewildered subscriber Aziz writes: Josh, I am asking you for the last time (for the day) How do you constantly keep on coming up with mini meaningful and actionable advice almost daily? Seriously? I have been drowning in analysis paralysis and you keep on cranking things out. HOW? Unfortunately I am no stranger to Mr. […]
Continue readingOnce I had a chance to interview one of the best-known bloggers in the programming niche. Toward the end of the interview, I made a rookie blunder: I asked a question with the main purpose of trying to impress the guy, who at the time I really looked up to. I don’t remember exactly what […]
Continue readingSeems like once a week I get an email from a subscriber who’s amazed that I can crank out these emails so consistently, day after day. How are you so disciplined, they say. Confession time: Writing consistently has long been a HUGE struggle for me. I’ve wanted to blog consistently since, oh, about 2009. Back […]
Continue readingGot an email the other week from a reader named Roos who wants to email his list more but finds it a struggle. Roos mused: Dan Kennedy says fatigue makes cowards of us all. I have trouble writing emails in the later time of the day. Especially the ones that should both entertain and sell. […]
Continue readingYesterday one of my coaching students told me: “I’m stuck. I’m trying to come up with a lead magnet to grow my list, but I can’t seem to get inside their head and come up with something interesting.” I get stuck here too. Sometimes I’ll sit down to start an email or work on a […]
Continue readingA couple years back I ran a giveaway that surpassed my wildest expectations — 187,991 new email subscribers in 11 days. Insane. What I don’t talk much about is how I almost pulled the plug on the whole thing. I was totally stressed out. My server crashed. People were trying to hack into WordPress. The […]
Continue readingThere’s an app I’ve always wanted for my phone. With this app, I could tap one icon and just start writing. No futzing around with filling in note titles. Or entering email addresses. Or digging around in folders. This app would be just a scratchpad for dumping out words. And when I was done, I […]
Continue readingAt my day job (I’m a programmer when I’m not writing sales copy), we talk to other remote team members with an instant message program called HipChat. It includes some fun “emoticons,” including this one: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Can you see it? The little dude flipping the table in rage? Lately I’ve been using that icon […]
Continue readingA few weeks back, Derick Bailey forwarded me an email he’d received from one of his subscribers, asking for my take on the question the reader had posed. The question boiled down to this: How do you stay focused on a side project (app, site, book idea) as an entrepreneurial developer? Here’s what I had […]
Continue readingPortland doesn’t get a lot of snow. An occasional dusting, from what I’ve heard. Maybe an inch or so of slush once in a while. But this was a weird winter in the U.S., and in mid-Feburary, a storm dumped 12 inches of snow on Portland. That evening, a couple of students at Reed College […]
Continue readingAs I’m sitting here, writing this, my neighbor’s lawn mower is whining away in the background. Last spring, I probably would have been out there with him. Not this year. Early each Monday morning, usually as I’m working on my latest Sublime Text-related blog post, a pickup truck with a trailer rolls up in front […]
Continue readingThe little group of Jamaican children kept glancing at me. And pointing. And giggling. I was 17 at the time, and visiting Jamaica as part of a church group on a mission trip. We helped to convert an old warehouse into a church/school building, and it was the pre-teen future pupils who were getting such […]
Continue readingSometimes I think my brain is trying to kill me. All day, while I’m working, it’s running off in the background, thinking up things to work me to death. It’s especially good at finding little annoyances in life and convincing me that I should “lifehack” them, or find a way to automate or optimize them […]
Continue readingIt’s discouraging, having to hold down a day job when you really want to be hacking on that great idea for a web app you’re kicking around, or writing your book, or starting your own business. You look at your lack of progress on one hand, and the huge block of your day that you […]
Continue readingGTD was great for breaking the cycle of disorganization that I’d allowed myself to fall into. But now that I’ve practiced it for a few years, I’m finding another approach to organizing my time is more effective: habits and routines. Putting together a comprehensive system that allowed me to keep track of all of the […]
Continue readingI owe a lot to GTD. Six or seven years ago, I was an ineffective and disorganized worker. I forgot things all the time, missed deadlines regularly, and struggled to keep up with the demands of my job. Reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done and doing my best to implement it turned my life around. […]
Continue readingSo why am I putting in all this effort to write faster, anyway? If I want to be more productive, shouldn’t I just focus on carving out more time to write? After all, I can write just as many words per day just by increasing the amount of time I spend at the keyboard, can’t […]
Continue readingI’m writing my ebook in the least efficient way possible: Every day, I publish an update of at least 100 words. And you know what? It’s working great. Publishing 100-word chunks throws the “writing process” out the window Writing involves several discrete steps: organization and outlining, research, writing the first draft, editing the final draft, […]
Continue readingEvery couple of months, it occurs to me that I’d be way more productive if I could just get up earlier and get some writing done on my ebook, weekly newsletter and blog before starting work at my day job. Writing is important to me, so why not tackle it first thing?
I get fired up, set an arbitrary goal (500 words a day sounds achievable!), crank my alarm back to 6:15 and hit the pillow with head abuzz about how I’m going to crush it on my new schedule.
Continue readingThe negative reviews for Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Work Week scared me off three times. A con man who needs to be taken down. Modern day snake oil. This advice works if you’re already making $40,000 a month, otherwise forget it. When my curiosity finally won out, I was braced for a hyper-ventilating sermon: “Start […]
Continue readingSince discovering Getting Things Done four years ago, I’ve tried just about every task management system out there: text files, Remember the Milk, Toodledoo, Evernote, OneNote, Outlook, paper, hipster PDAs. They all have their strengths, but each was missing some key element that left me wanting more. The search is over, though. Trello is about […]
Continue readingAbout a month ago, I watched Scott Hanselman’s awesome productivity talk, It’s not what you read, it’s what you ignore, and it spurred me to take a hard look at my daily Internet usage. As a result I’ve finished several projects that were previously languishing on my to-do list, and I’ve improved my focus. One […]
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