If you’re feeling like you’re not making meaningful progress toward a goal, or if your day is just filled with more distractions that it should be, then perhaps you need a “Stop Doing” list. What is getting in your way from the results you want? If it’s things within your control … | Continue reading
Above are some photos from a recent camping trip to the back trails of Arapaho National Forest near Ute Pass. There are many things I love about Colorado. And one of them is that crisp, mountain-pine air. These photos remind me of that. If you want to use these on your devices as … | Continue reading
As you may know, here at Blanc Media we work in 8-week cycles. But, for this current work cycle we did something new to us. We staggered our sabbatical week. Why? Well, I just opened the doors for the all-new Focus Accelerator membership (you can join here). And everyone who join … | Continue reading
Many times, when met with small windows of “awkward downtime”, we decide to just pull out our smart phone and scroll. Here are a few ways alternative ways you can spend those 5 – 10 minutes… If you Use Day One, scroll through your Day One timeline and read a previous journal entr … | Continue reading
You won’t ever make all the edges of your life smooth and finished. Even as we grow and mature in our life, the edges also get pushed out and they remain fuzzy. Don’t worry about “fixing” those outer edges — they will always be there. Instead focus on the center and on the core — … | Continue reading
1. Identify what you want to do. 2. Plan a time you will do it. 3. Celebrate that you followed through. (And then, repeat.) | Continue reading
Try this: tonight, before you go to bet, set out your clothes for tomorrow. Why, Shawn!? One reason we procrastinate is because we lack a system of execution. If you make the first step of a task or project easier on yourself, then you have one step one already decided. It will m … | Continue reading
Goals give you a direction to go. Habits keep you moving forward toward your goals. (This is why I track my habits and regularly revisit my goals.) | Continue reading
When we moved into our house about 6 years ago, we re-finished the storage room and turned into a home office. And so, well, let’s just say we don’t have very much space for storage. But that’s fine because it forces us to only keep the things we love and/or use regularly. A guid … | Continue reading
I recently revisited this article about ideas, and a few things about it stuck out fresh to me: Your team and your system of execution is far more valuable than your idea. Done and shipped is vastly more important than almost done. And, in fact, these two go together. You need to … | Continue reading
Coasting in life means you are not taking action. And, thus, you are, by nature: Going downhill; living off the momentum of your past effort; or being pulled / pushed along by someone else. | Continue reading
As the warmer months are finally upon us, here’s a refresher on my four rules of book buying: Don’t be a wimp about it. Don’t stress about reading them cover to cover. Make notes and mark up the margins. Share what you learn. ✚✚ | Continue reading
A lot of productivity and time management advice includes all the things you should not do. Don’t sleep in. Don’t use your phone in the morning. Don’t check email before lunchtime. Don’t binge watch Netflix late into the night. Don’t have social media on your phone, etc… Don’t le … | Continue reading
I was recently flipping through Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism, and came across this quote that I had highlighted: “If you believe being overly busy and overextended is evidence of productivity, then you probably believe that creating space to explore, think, and reflect shoul … | Continue reading
One definition of Focus is “Maximum Clarity”. But, in life, having maximum clarity doesn’t always mean having absolute, perfect clarity. Focus can be a graduating scale. Sometimes, having maximum clarity right now, may still seem a bit vague… maybe you are only 80% confident and … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago I shared about how my company just celebrated its 11-year anniversary. And many of you emailed me with some fantastic questions about running a business, etc. So I’m wanted to answer a handful of them here. Let’s go…. . . . . . “What did you give up and what did [ … | Continue reading
In this excellent article from Paul Graham, he talks about the fact that a lot of work kinda sucks — that’s the nature of it a lot of time. And so you have to just dive on in and do it. But, unfortunately, a lot of people and teams will shy away from the work […] | Continue reading
Our boys just had spring break and since spring in Kansas City means sunny and 68 degrees one day and rainy and 42 degrees the next, we spent a decent amount of time playing games (we are a gaming family anyway). Here are some favorites of ours right now. Root: This is the top ga … | Continue reading
A reader recently asked me about procrastination, and I pointed them to this article about The 5-Minute Rule. There are many activities in life that are worth doing but that aren’t always easy to get started. A few things that come to mind for me include: Cleaning up the house at … | Continue reading
After about 30 sabbaticals or so, here’s what an average week-long break looks like for me. | Continue reading
Being “busy” and “productive” is not the same as being strategic. We all know the tips and tricks and best practices for how to be productive. But we don’t know how to be intentional and strategic — because strategy can be subjective and it’s not always obvious. Here’s how to be … | Continue reading
Perhaps, like me, you grew up being taught that there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. But that doesn’t mean all questions are equal. A great question will go much further in getting you to a great answer. Three of my favorite smarter questions are: What should I sta … | Continue reading
There are 8 Laws of Focus and one of them is the Law of Tradeoffs. As David Allen said, you can do anything but you cannot do everything. In order to give your perpetual devotion to any one thing it will require the perpetual neglect of many other things. Focus, therefore, requir … | Continue reading
Speaking of meta work… if you take a few minutes to create an implementation intention for your task, then you are 3x more likely to do that task (as opposed to simply writing the task down). What’s an implementation intention? It’s simply deciding when and where you will do some … | Continue reading
Every Monday I start with this template: Top 3 projects Events or themes each day Any misc tasks How I want to celebrate at the end of the week Even a simple plan like this will eliminate dozens of redundant decisions for me over the next week. | Continue reading
There are 4 necessary steps to doing work that matters: Identify Plan Act Celebrate Only one of those steps is actually doing the work. The other 3 are what we call “meta work”. Meta work is the work that happens before and after the work itself. If you are cooking dinner, meta w … | Continue reading
Here’s one from the archives that I recently re-surfaced. As I was reading through this listicle, it’s amazing how smart and timeless a lot of this advice is. I would say that the first two items in the list still stand as true as ever, if not even more so now. ✚✚ | Continue reading
Something fun happened earlier this week: Monday was the 11-year anniversary of when I quit my job and began blogging for a living! On Monday, I walked into the office and proudly exclaimed that this business goes to 11! I’ve been waiting a decade to tell that joke, yet all I got … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, as our latest Focus Academy cohort was wrapping up, one of the members asked in the Slack group about how to spend time during the “down moments” of his work day when there was roughly 5 or 10 minutes with nothing to do. Perhaps you’ve experienced just such an aw … | Continue reading
Here’s the thing with focused people: They are not perfectly focused and organized all the time. Nobody is like that. But, what focused people do have are the systems, tools, the approaches t… | Continue reading
After you take time to rest and recharge then you should actually be rested and recharged. Things that drain you of your energy are, therefore, not restful. True rest requires effort. ([Cheatsheet]… | Continue reading
A small decision is something trivial: * What to have for breakfast * What to wear * When to begin work * When to take your lunch break * Etc. Many of these small decisions can be automated and rou… | Continue reading
Back in December, several people got Covid at my boys’ school, and so everyone ended up with a 4-week-long holiday break over December and January. And so, with our boys home for a month solid, we … | Continue reading
It seems to be that right around the holidays and the new year (November through January), we feel especially burned out, overloaded, and anxious. Why? Well, here is a look at three things that can… | Continue reading
There is an idea about habits and routines that you always want a non-zero day. A non-zero day means a day where you do *something* — just so long as you don’t do nothing: Do at least o… | Continue reading
Last week I began reading Annie Duke’s fantastic book, *[Thinking in Bets]( First takeaway so far is this: **Do not equate the quality of a decision with the result of that decision.** For example:… | Continue reading
Sometimes, if you insist on using “The Best”, it can actually hold you back and slow you down. For example… Last fall my company switched project management tools. We were Basecamp for years,… | Continue reading
In Ray Dalio’s book, *[Principles]( he lists a 5-step process for how to make progress on your goals: 1. Identify your goals. 2. Encounter your problems. 3. Diagnose the problems to get to th… | Continue reading
Shortly after my first son was born, I realized that I did not like the camera in my phone. And so, in the fall of 2012, I bought my first “real” camera. Which means it’s been eight years since I b… | Continue reading
[When I sit down to plan my week]( I always write down the two or three most important projects I’m going to focus on. Sometimes those projects are easy and obvious: fix this; build that; finish th… | Continue reading
If you feel that your productivity has been hitting a slump, I highly recommend planning out your week ahead of time. Getting clear about what you’ll be doing during the upcoming week will help you… | Continue reading
*“Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.”* — Stanley Kubrick —- I rented a Fuji x100V for the next couple of weeks. And it arrived yesterday. … | Continue reading
How goes your quarantine life? Does the outside beckon? What new hobbies have you begun? Me? In the past week I ordered a Costco-sized container of artisanal pickling spice and have begun to resear… | Continue reading
As has become my new norm over these past few weeks, I am sitting at my kitchen countertop [spending the first hour of my day writing]( The coffee this morning is from [Yes Plz]( My soundtrack is a… | Continue reading
This April 2020 was our best April ever, and it was our 7th best month of all time in terms of net business revenue. Thank you! In these uncertain times, my team and I are incredibly grateful to ha… | Continue reading
[The 6am writing time block has been working well for me.]( I have recently begun getting up around 6am to spend the first hour of my day writing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, my iPad, and U… | Continue reading
This past week I have been trying something new in the mornings. We have 3 boys at home. And if I ever write a book on parenting it will have one chapter. And in that one chapter it will have one s… | Continue reading
It’s now been a month since my family and I began self-isolating at home. Here at the Blanc house things have somewhat begun to settle into a new normal. Well, as normal as things can be considerin… | Continue reading