Category: Productivity

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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You Must Meme Your Dreams Into Existence Cover

You Must Meme Your Dreams Into Existence

Nik

Why is America “The Greatest Country in the World™?”

Unlike Italy (Caesar), Greece (Alexander the Great), and Mongolia (Genghis Khan), America never ruled half the known world. In fact, America is only 200 years old. It’s one of the youngest countries of all.

So why do they get that slogan? America gets that slogan because for all 200 of those years, they’ve been yelling it at the top of their lungs. When the founding fathers put their signatures on that document, they said: “This is what makes a country great.”

Ever since, America at large has been saying, “Look! This is what makes a country great. And we’re doing it! Look at us! That is why our country is the greatest.” It’s marketing — but it works.

“Which country is the best?” is a stupid question, of course, but let’s ignore that for a second. For any of the years it has existed, including this one, you could argue a thousand ways that America is not the greatest country in the world. You could use facts. You could use opinions. You could use ideas. What about originally taking the land from Native Americans? What about slavery? What about the problems with energy, finance, poverty, food, race, and a million other things? Every country has problems. America is no exception.

And yet, if you could put your ear on the global chatter-chamber, you’d find there’s no debate: By and large, people around the world agree that the USA are “The Greatest Country in the World™.” It might not be more than half the global population, but it sure is a hell of a lot more than just the 328 million people who live there. How many dream of moving to the USA? Billions.

USA wins, and it wins because when it comes to “the country reputation scoreboard,” Americans have made up a competition and declared themselves the winner. They’ve memed the outcome they wanted into existence, and even if the memes were just made up, the result is very much real.

Achieving your dreams works the exact same way.

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Unwind Your Mind Cover

Unwind Your Mind

Nik

Your mind has many layers. All day, you keep jumping from one to another.

There’s the work layer, which contains your to-do list, your career goals, and a million process workflows.

There’s the organization layer, which reminds you to do grocery shopping and keep your adult life together.

There’s the social layer, which sends a friend’s joke into your ear mid-lunch and prompts you to call your mom.

Each of these layers breaks down into a million smaller sheets, and you’re Tarzan, trampolining from level to level inside the bouncy castle of your mind. That can be exhausting. When it is, it’s simply time to take a break.

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Acceptance Is Better Than Discipline Cover

Acceptance Is Better Than Discipline

Nik

When a fly lands on your nose, your inclination is to swat at it. Shoo! Go away! There are several reasons not to do it.

For one, even though it only takes a second to wave, it might not be much longer before the fly sits in the same spot again. She can play this game for hours! Can you?

This leads to the second reason: You’re not in the business of fly-swatting. Whatever job you actually have in the moment, it’s much more important than squashing a pesky bug — especially one that means you no harm.

The third and final reason is that if your job happens to be driving a vehicle, working at height, or giving an all-important presentation, losing focus could be of lethal consequence — in two cases literally, in one metaphorically.

The fly can be a stand-in for any number of unexpected unpleasantries, but the point remains the same: It pays to stick with what matters, even when the going gets tough.

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9 Timeless Articles You’ll Read Many Times Over the Years Cover

9 Timeless Articles You’ll Read Many Times Over the Years

Nik

“Matter” is my theme for this year. As in: What matters?

So far, it has been fun to ask this question in my personal life. What are the things I really need? Who are the people I really want to be around? I’m decluttering and prioritizing the people I care about.

When it comes to my work, however, asking this question hasn’t been fun at all. It’s throwing me for a massive loop. All writers eventually hit this wall. In my case, I look back at seven years and some 2,000 pieces, and when I ask, “Which ones did I really care to write?” the answer is “Shockingly few.”

When you’ve written every day for so long, there’s always another idea, always another fluff piece you could write. Fortunately or not, I’m so bored of fluff pieces. I’d rather not repeat myself for 50 years. So, how can my problem be to your benefit?

Well, in my investigation of “Which writing matters?” I couldn’t help but dig up the articles that mattered most to me over the years. The following nine are beacons of light I keep coming back to again and again. I hope you too will find their timeless wisdom worth revisiting.

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The Office Isn’t Dead Cover

The Office Isn’t Dead

Nik

If home is where I live, the office can be where I work. I’ve never had a problem with this distinction. In fact, I used to quite like it until it disappeared.

If I ask you “How’s the office?” right now, you’ll probably say some version of: “What office? My office is everywhere, as long as it’s in my house.” But what if I slightly alter the question? What if I ask you: “How do you feel about the office?” What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Maybe, it’s the spicy hot dogs you inappropriately ate at 9 AM in the morning in the canteen of the place you interned at when you were 23. Maybe, it’s that one overbearing boss whose antics made you paranoid about details in a way you can’t quite shake to this day, paranoia you now often wonder about, hating it, yet thinking it may actually, ironically, contribute to your success.

Maybe, it’s the friendly doorman greeting you with a relentless smile each morning as you entered a big skyscraper you knew you’d only leave when it was dark again. Maybe, it’s the pungent smell of your colleague’s desk plant, a plant you wanted to throw into the trash every time you walked by but that now, you still somehow seem to miss.

Whatever they may look like, chances are, your feelings about the office are more complicated than “I’m so glad to be rid of it.” At least mine are.

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