It’s amazing how much intentional destruction you can do to a piece of hardwood when you’ve got some 60-grit sandpaper and an orbital sander. I have been spending my weekends in my garage workshop,… | Continue reading
Good music is instrumental (ha!) for me to do focused work. *Especially* when I am working at home with kids in the house. I almost always have a single, go-to album that I put on when it is time t… | Continue reading
Here in Kansas City, we have a rainy season every spring and it is my favorite thing about living here. During the rainy season we’ll get massive thunderstorms with huge downpours. It seems like th… | Continue reading
The past few days I have been spending a lot more time than normal reading the news and checking social media. (Pretty sure we all have!) There is so much happening so fast. While I don’t personall… | Continue reading
For years, my wife and I have kept a 5-day emergency supply of non-perishable food items in our home. We recently expanded those reserves to a 3-week supply of non-perishables that our family could… | Continue reading
It was shortly after my first son was born that I began to get seriously interested in photography. I had all these photos of him, but they had been taken on my iPhone 4. And honestly, they were no… | Continue reading
Kansas City has a ton of great coffee shops. (If you are ever visiting, let me know and I’ll recommend some spots to you.) [Broadway]( is one of the oldest and most wonderful. I’ve been visiting Br… | Continue reading
[About a week ago]( I moved all the icons off my iPhone’s first Home screen. Basically I moved everything over by one screen. So the first Home screen became the second, the second became third, et… | Continue reading
My wife and I recently went on a date downtown near Westport. And there is a cozy, local bookstore that I love to stop in whenever I’m nearby. We walked around for a while, perusing the new and old… | Continue reading
This week was my deadline for wrapping up the final version of a very special, very new project. And then, today, we recorded a bunch of videos for our upcoming 2020 Plan Your Year update. That’s w… | Continue reading
One of my favorite things to do over the holidays is read in the corner while everyone else is doing something else. Holidays or not, it has always been difficult for me to fully enjoy my down time… | Continue reading
I’m not sure if it’s the changing weather, or something else, but whatever the reason may be, my personal interest in photography feels like it has been exploding over the past few months. And so, … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, a giant, heavy box arrived on my front porch. Inside was [the new fire pit made by the folks at Tiki]( My 3-year-old and I set it up in about 10 minutes. And when I say *set it up*… | Continue reading
A few days ago Mike Schmitz wrote our pick on The Sweet Setup for [the best meditation app]( I have long been a proponent and practitioner of regular, quiet, alone time — it is something that has (… | Continue reading
Use the Mind and Body workout as a way to rest and recover while still be intentional about your health and fitness. | Continue reading
Earlier this summer my family spent several days in Fort Robinson, Nebraska for a huge family reunion on my wife’s side. On the second-to-last day, I woke up extra early in order to get out for som… | Continue reading
It’s November, which means Pomegranate season (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). We always have a few pomegranates on hand, and for the longest time we always processed the wron… | Continue reading
On Twitter, I have been posting links to my daily articles with a preface of which NaNoBlogMo day it is. Like so: Several folks have asked me if, technically, it should be “NaBloWriMo” instead? You… | Continue reading
Yesterday, after putting my 3 boys to bed, I was walking upstairs and encountered a fight scene on pause… After dinner, all three boys had been at the top of the stairs playing together. My o… | Continue reading
One of the best new features in [iPadOS]( has been the addition of the Today View on the iPad Home Screen. There are a few reasons I like it. For one, it just looks better than the plain grid of ic… | Continue reading
Later today my friend and the Executive Editor for The Sweet Setup, Mike Schmitz, and I will be hosting a free, live webinar to share about iPad Productivity, workflows, and how to be gooder at usi… | Continue reading
Breckenridge, Colorado is one of the best towns in Colorado. It’s beautiful. It’s full of great things to do. It has a bunch of excellent food and drink spots. And, arguably, it’s home to one of th… | Continue reading
The New Year is both a great and a terrible time to try and start a new habit. It’s great because there are times and seasons during the year that are more conducive to startting something new. Spr… | Continue reading
Barrett Brooks is the COO of ConvertKit. He writes fantastic articles about leadership on [his website]( and he’s on the [Twitter]( I was in Portland having breakfast with Barrett, and I asked his … | Continue reading
One of the big, overarching pillars of the Focus Course LIVE is to help folks get clear on the vision they have for their work and life and then create the space they need in order to walk that out… | Continue reading
Here in the United States, November is known for three things: 1. Thanksgiving 2. Not shaving 3. Writing a novel Starting today — Friday, November 1 — I’ll be writing and publishing something every… | Continue reading
A couple weeks ago I [hosted]( my third annual Breckenridge mastermind retreat. And I noticed something was different this year compared to the [previous]( years: The most common note-taking tool w… | Continue reading
Over the summer, some friends and I went to Bull Shoals for camping and spearfishing. After our first day there I noticed that in the early mornings and in the evenings the river would get a huge b… | Continue reading
First off, thanks so much to all the kind and positive replies to [my story from Friday]( about the tumor they found in my wife’s eye. It was not easy for me to write that story. But I wanted to sh… | Continue reading
They found a tumor in my wife’s eye. Earlier this year she went in for an eye exam to see if she could get Lasik. The doctor did a double take and asked if anyone had ever told her she had a freckl… | Continue reading
Over the years, I have gone in and out of so many seasons where I felt on the edge of burnout. Frustrated at home. Creatively dry at work. Freaked out about money. Etc. Sometimes I’ll realize that … | Continue reading
Here are a couple of shots from the studio. These were taken about 3 weeks ago while filming the upcoming Margin Course that comes out this upcoming Tuesday the 30th. We recorded all 19 videos for … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago I was in Nashville for about 24 hours to briefly visit an old friend and connect with a new one. We had dinner at Bourbon Steak. A restaurant that sits on top of the JW Marriott in … | Continue reading
Margin is the space between our load and our limit. It’s the breathing room between that which we are capable of and that which we are responsible for. In short, it looks like this: Your total capa… | Continue reading
Yesterday I shared about the need for breathing room in your life in order to live out your values. I’ll be digging more into this over the next few weeks leading up to The Margin Course, which is … | Continue reading
To be blunt, without margin, you are suffocating your ability to walk out your values. This goes for your finances, your emotional availability, your physical energy, your relational presence, and … | Continue reading
This is me, thinking out loud about my writing. There is writing, and then there is *Writing*. And I am amazed at how often I will shy away from the former because it doesn’t feel like the la… | Continue reading
. The workshop was downtown at the Music City Center — a stunning building with incr… | Continue reading
A few months ago I bought two pairs of noise-cancelling headphones: 1. [Sony XM3]( 2. [B&O H9i]( First of all, noise-cancelling headphones are amazing! Where have these things been all my life?… | Continue reading
Last week my production manager, Isaac, and I went to a workshop hosted by Todd Henry. And it was absolutely incredible. (I’ll tell you more about the workshop in just a second.) Todd is the author… | Continue reading
Your *productivity* and your *moral character* are not intertwined. Meaning: Getting things done does not make you a good or better person. And, conversely, *failing* to be “productive” does not ma… | Continue reading
Here at the Blanc house, we love to grill. We’re also trying to cut out sugar from our diet. Alas, brown sugar is one of the key ingredients in a good BBQ dry rub. So I made my own that is sugar fr… | Continue reading
Six months and nine days ago it was the first of October 2018 and I decided to do a workout every single day for the whole month. And I’ve been able to keep that streak going. According to the acti… | Continue reading
A few months ago I bought one of the best drip coffee makers in the world. Truly, as I was walking out of the store with box in hand, four — (4!) — different people stopped me to say how excited o… | Continue reading
It has now been one month since [I deleted Twitter and Instagram]( from my iPhone. I also made a commitment to [put my iPhone into Do No Disturb]( and leave it in another room of the house during o… | Continue reading
I got a lot of inspiration from [this brief article]( by Derek Sivers on the benefits of a daily diary and topic journals. I’m already a fan of regular (if not daily) journaling. I’ve been logging … | Continue reading