This week I picked a cover for The Art of Focus. Many thanks to the fine people on my email list for helping with that process. Lots of great feedback was given and I’m very happy with the cover that resulted.
On that note, if you’re not on the email list make sure you sign up so that you can get The Art of Focus FREE when it comes out on August 28th.
What I Shipped
On Monday I talked about the MacBook Pro updates being pretty dang terrible. As I said in the post, I’m mostly in iOS land now for writing and coding so that’s totally fine with me.
On Wednesday I went a bit heavier as I talked about some of my struggles with suicidal thoughts. You’re not alone and people care about you. You can get every episode of The Smart Business Show in your podcast player of choice by subscribing.
On Thursday I looked at a “classic” book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I didn’t like how it was written, but I do in general agree with the principles. You can listen to it or read it. Make sure you don’t miss a book that matters by subscribing to Should I Read It
Freelance Friday Five
1. I Bet I Can Make You A Top Writer on Medium in 7 Days’ Time
The only place I’ve seen significant traffic from as I’ve been guest blogging is Medium. And there I use it as a platform to share my content further than just my own blog. The article above is a great one if you want to become a top writer on Medium. After my book launch, I’m going to start working on some of these things.
2. Why single-tasking is your greatest competitive advantage
In my book The Art of Focus I talk about the fact that the longer I’ve worked on a computer the less I’ve been enamoured with multiple screens. In the line above Chris Bowler talks about the allure of CMD+Space. It’s easy to switch between applications in macOS or Windows or Linux. There is more friction in iOS which means I do it less.
I’ve chosen my tool for maximum productivity and focus. Have you made that choice with your tools?
3. Another Way to Lead by Example – Shawn Blanc
Great post by Shawn Blanc talking about hours being an easy measure. We don’t need to lead by example and putting way more hours than those we lead. There are other ways to lead and Shawn talks about it.
4. Summer Is Here And We Will Sweat Without Shame – semi-rad.com
Enjoyed this ode to sweat. I take walking meetings regularly and it’s up to 30C right now in BC so that means sweaty walks with people I may do business with at some point.
Maybe I should tell them to bring a bathing suit as well since we walk right by a local swimming hole just before we get back to the cars.
5. Mac Power Users 438: Workflows with Matt Gemmell — Mac Power Users
The part that has the best takeaway is that we don’t need to apologize when we change what we do. Something can be right for you for a while and then you’ve changed so what you do changes.
Are you afraid of changing something?