Category: Productivity

Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun Cover

Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun

Nik

“All I want is work-life balance.”

How often have you had this thought?

In theory, it makes sense: We strive to spend our lives well. That means directing the right amounts of time, effort, and attention to life’s many domains, from the necessities to taking care of ourselves to what’s most important to us.

Therefore, if we could allocate our limited resources perfectly, we’d achieve the ultimate equilibrium — and with it calm and happiness, right?

I don’t think so. In fact, I believe work-life balance doesn’t exist — and I can prove it to you with a single question:

What does perfect work-life balance look like, in detail, in your very life?

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The Plus-and-Minus Theory of Living Happily Cover

The Plus-and-Minus Theory of Living Happily

Nik

On most days, I don’t shower to not feel dirty. I shower to feel clean. It may not sound like it, but there’s a difference.

Have you ever wasted away in bed for a few days until, at some point, you couldn’t stand your greasy hair anymore and lugged yourself into the shower? If so, by turning on the water, you took care of what Frederick Herzberg would have called “a hygiene factor” — pun present but not intended.

In his 1959 book The Motivation to Work, Herzberg, a clinical psychologist and professor, introduced a model of motivation called “the two-factor theory.” It stipulates that in order to feel happy in our jobs, two conditions must come together: a lack of dissatisfaction and a presence of satisfaction.

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7 Lessons From the 7th Year of Running a Book Summary Business Cover

7 Lessons From the 7th Year of Running a Book Summary Business

Nik

My business has lasted as long as the average American marriage — seven years. The level of commitment surely feels on par.

When I launched Four Minute Books, I had no idea what it would grow into. All I thought about was how to get better at writing and maybe make a few bucks along the way.

Seven years later, in what has been, undoubtedly, my hardest year in business yet, it turns out that this little book summary site is, so far, the only consistently growing revenue generator. Here’s a chart contrasting its revenue vs. Medium and Write Like a Pro, my writing course.

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Why I Deleted Most of My Social Media Cover

Why I Deleted Most of My Social Media

Nik

A few weeks ago, just before Elon bought Twitter and made it look cool, I deleted my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. “FITT,” their initials spell, and fitter I feel indeed.

The main idea behind minimalism isn’t to save money or time. It is to save mental energy, which physical items take up, even if they’re sitting quietly in your attic. Somewhere in your subconscious, you know the broken volleyball net is up there. Even if it only makes it to the top of your mind on occasion, you’ll feel a burden being lifted once you chuck it in the trash.

Digital minimalism works the same: You can stop using your social media, but the accounts will still be there. So will all the connections. All the posts you’ve created will still harbor the energy you put into them. The weight of sunk costs will be palpable.

“I wonder what Marcus from my year abroad is doing.” That thought hits different when you can check up on Marcus vs. when you can’t — and the latter is not necessarily a bad thing.

We tend to be kinder to people when we keep them only in our memory. Plus, when you can’t see Marcus’ new house, you won’t feel bad about yourself from the inevitable comparison that follows. When Marcus only visits your attention once a leap year, your natural reaction is to wish him well, then be on your way. For many relationships in our lives, this is the way they’re supposed to go. We’re not wired to maintain distant yet infinite contact with thousands of people.

Manage your social media in a way that prevents them from managing you.

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Routines vs Rituals Cover

Protect Your Routines, Not Your Rituals

Nik

When I don’t leave the house, I won’t get much done. That’s the deal my brain has struck with itself. Little of my best work has happened at home. I’ve always been most productive when I separated the two, and being self-employed while living in a studio apartment has only confirmed that trend.

It doesn’t matter when I leave the house. As long as I do and arrive at an office, a Starbucks, literally anywhere with wifi, productivity will follow. The other day, I went to WeWork at 6 PM on a Saturday to shop Christmas gifts. It worked! Even a task as trivial as booking a train ticket, I’d rather do “at work” if you gave me a choice.

Lately, my mornings look like this: I wake up at 7, drink water, and brush teeth. I do some push-ups, some sit-ups, and shower. I meditate for 10–15 minutes, get dressed, grab a banana or prep some food, and go. That’s a lot of stuff. The part that matters, however, is that I leave the house. I could skip all the rest, and sometimes, I do. I might meditate at work or shower at night. I’ll move my workout or get food on the way.

The point here is that some habits deserve protection, whereas others do not. To determine which is which, I like to separate them into two categories: Routines vs rituals.

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Sometimes, the Work Is Easier Than the Workaround Cover

Sometimes, the Work Is Easier Than the Workaround

Nik

When my favorite writer stopped writing, I decided to save all his articles, lest he delete them. I knew I could save them one by one in Evernote, but since he had published over 100 pieces, I thought there might be a way to avoid this tedium.

I asked a developer friend for help, and he referred me to another mutual friend of ours. I messaged that friend on Slack but didn’t get a response. A week later, I emailed him. A few more days went by, but then, he responded.

My friend suggested two scraping tools for the job. I started comparing their features and pricing. As it turned out, one tool would limit exports on a free trial, so I went with the other one. I downloaded it, installed it, and made an account.

The tool was pretty technical, so it took a while to grasp the basics. Eventually, I got it to load my favorite author’s index page, where all his stories were linked. Then, however, the tool required making complex workflows, and to top it all off, it only seemed to export to CSV, not PDF.

At this point, I finally decided the juice was no longer worth the squeeze. I sat down after lunch, sipped some coffee, cranked up the music, and went to work. One by one, I opened each article in a new tab, clicked the Evernote Web Clipper, chose the right output settings, and saved it.

Some pages took forever to load. Chrome groaned under the pressure. Evernote kept changing its settings, so I had to fiddle with them each time. After about an hour, however, I made it. There it was: My favorite author’s entire essay collection, preserved for future readings.

All in all, saving 100+ articles by hand was boring, tedious, and eye-roll inducing. I felt grumpy, annoyed, and frustrated at times. In short, it was exactly what you’d expect it to be. It was also, however, the 100% right thing to do — the shortest path to results, and thus the quickest way to satisfaction.

“Work smarter, not harder!” It’s a piece of advice cited like gospel in meetings, speeches, and job interviews. But how much time do you spend trying to out-smart the work? Isn’t thinking the hardest work of all? Thinking a lot without meaningful breakthroughs — there’s hardly a faster way to exhaustion.

Sometimes, it’s better to admit you’re not that good at it. Sometimes, the work is easier than the workaround.

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The 3 Rules for Dropping Projects Cover

The 3 Rules for Dropping Projects

Nik

It’s an unwritten law of entrepreneurship that for every project you stick with, there are at least three you’ll quit or never start.

In my case, there’s the car blog, the car Instagram, the inspired quotes Instagram, the animated quotes app, the anti-stress course, and hundreds of deleted article ideas — and those are just some of the least public of my failures. I quit my Substack newsletter after six weeks, quit as editor of Better Marketing, and quit another newsletter to write a book, which I then quit to write another book. I’m now on book #3 and have given up announcing. Quit, quit, quit.

On the plus side, it is only out of this flaming pile of failures that a handful of lasting, rewarding projects were able to emerge. Projects like Four Minute Books or my writing course, which pay the bills and align well with my long-term mission of being a writing-focused writer.

On Shark Tank, one of Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful’s most common pieces of advice is to “take that idea behind the barn and shoot it.” He has no qualms about telling people with six figures in sales to drop a product that’s already dead but doesn’t know it yet. But how can you tell? What do you do if you don’t have Mr. Wonderful yelling in your face?

One mistake we make is that we try to evaluate each new idea on its own merits rather than relative to what we’re already doing. Everyone wants 100,000 Twitter followers, but unless you have indication to believe tweeting would be a better use of your time than your current project, you shouldn’t start posting memes on a whim. Similarly, while writing a book is hard and takes forever, it could be the right move at the right stage in your career.

To help you determine what to drop and what to rock, here are three lessons I’ve learned over the years. I try to live by these rules, and they’ve made my life a lot easier.

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Do Self-Help Books Work? Cover

How Modern Non-Fiction Books Waste Your Time (and Why You Should Read Them Anyway)

Nik

When I first discovered non-fiction books, I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Whatever problem you could possibly have, there’s a book out there to help you solve it. I had a lot of challenges at the time, and so I started devouring lots of books.

I read books about money, productivity, and choosing a career. Then, I read books about marketing, creativity, and entrepreneurship. I read and read and read, and, eventually, I realized I had forgotten to implement any of the advice! The only habit I had built was reading, and as wonderful as it was, it left me only with information overwhelm.

After that phase, I flipped to the other, equally extreme end of the spectrum: I read almost no books, got all my insights from summaries, and only tried to learn what I needed to improve a given situation at any time.

So, do self-help books work? As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

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Don't Forget to Inhale Cover

Don’t Forget to Inhale

Nik

Living is exhaling.

You wake up, jump out, and make your bed. You brush teeth, get dressed, and race to the breakfast table. Phew!

You work. You type. You work harder. You type faster. Pheeew.

You buy groceries. You sort your bills. You tuck your kid in. Pheeeeeeeew.

You watch Netflix. You doomscroll. You listen to a friend yap for hours. Phew, phew, pheeeeeeeeeeeew.

By the time your head hits the pillow, you are exhausted. You’re wheezing.

What happened? Simple: You forgot to inhale. That’s also living.

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