• If you want to get more done, plan your day based on energy

    If you want to get more done, plan your day based on energy

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    Just like a muscle, our brains only have so much energy. We can’t sit and focus for hours without end. Most research shows us that we have about 50 minutes of focus followed by a 15 – 20 minute break. We can follow this cycle for around three hours and then we’re fried. We had

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  • If you don’t write it down, you’ll never do it so stop being lazy

    If you don’t write it down, you’ll never do it so stop being lazy

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    One of the tenets of most productivity systems is that you need to capture everything. While I don’t go quite that far and truly capture everything, I capture most stuff. One of the best phrases I found to get this point across was written by Tom Clancy and said by his main character Jack Ryan.

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  • Freelance Saturdays 002 – April 14 2018

    Freelance Saturdays 002 – April 14 2018

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    Welcome to Freelance Saturday’s you’re weekly dose of good reading to help you run your business better. A Professional Scrum Master’s Best Advice for a Productive Team w/ Lucas Smith (TPS189) — The Productivity Show | Getting Things Done (GTD) | Time Management | Evernote — Overcast Watch next Thursday for a review of Extreme

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  • Having Alternate Plans

    Having Alternate Plans

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    The problem that a lot of businesses have is that they always want to assume that everything is going to go aces all day. That they’ll be maximally productive all the time. Oh and don’t forget the unicorn tears that they drink at their fancy desk in the glass cube that happens to be dog

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  • If You Want to Stand Out You Need A Badass Brand

    If You Want to Stand Out You Need A Badass Brand

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    We all want to stand out from the crowd. We’re not interested in being average. Average for business is scraping by, hitting up a bunch of networking events hoping that this time something interesting will happen that will help our business break out. There is also an audio version of this you can listen to

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  • Your Productivity System Doesn’t Matter If you Can’t Plan To NOW

    Your Productivity System Doesn’t Matter If you Can’t Plan To NOW

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    I said in the Key Concept of Making Decisions, that if I touch a task three times I force myself to do it that week or push it off to my next quarterly planning cycle. That quarterly planning cycle is where I ask myself this question. “Given the resources I have and the time I

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  • Choosing my time

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    Matthew Lang referenced something I said and I figured I’d give an update. I recently made the choice to not use Instagram. I like Instagram and it has nothing to do with their parent company Facebook. I just find that when I have Instagram on any device I waste time looking through images that are

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  • If You Want to Ship Amazing Work You Need to Prioritize

    If You Want to Ship Amazing Work You Need to Prioritize

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    In any given day you have a number of tasks that could be done. They fall into one of a number of buckets. Most systems give you 4 different options. The four below are called an Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent and important Important, but not urgent Urgent, but not important Neither urgent nor important The first

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  • If you Want to Be Productive You Have to Make Decisions

    If you Want to Be Productive You Have to Make Decisions

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    I’ve already introduced this Key Concept when I talked about pushing problems off on future you. Tim Urban has a hilarious blog post on this type of procrastination as he talks about getting ready for his TED talk on…procrastination. It ends with February Tim needing to do all the work to get ready for the

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  • Freelance Saturdays – April 7

    Freelance Saturdays – April 7

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    Welcome to the all new shiny Freelance Saturday newsletter. This is going to be a collection of 3 – 5 things to read or listen to that can help you run a better business on Monday. Expect an issue every Saturday. To make sure you don’t miss an issue and get lots of extra goodies,

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