In this vlog, Rob explores 3 (or, well, 4) options to grabbing inspirations for new books, scenes, or characters. An important tip at the end for building an awesome “database” of ideas that you can pull from at any time!

Hey guys, I have a fairly short (22 minute) video talking about one of the hardest things I’ve been dealing with over the years. It is my hope that this will help you as much as it helped me. Finally, I apologize for the delay in getting this out. A sudden onset of medical issues has slowed me down even further.

Enjoy,

Rob

The act of creation is opposite of consuming, it adds energy to the universe, it can make you happy and helps you feel better. It makes you feel productive and feeling productive…makes you want to be more productive! The energy source of a positive breakthrough is that feeling of productive, that you did something that helped someone, even if it’s just yourself.

That’s what we’re talking about today, feeling productive. Notice my emphasis here – feeling. That’s what we really want to tap into, the feeling.

Like I mentioned in the last post – the cycle of depression and low-energy can be counter-acted by a cycle of creation. Feeling productive is a huge part of that, as anyone knows. It’s like a drug – when you feel it, you feel it and it makes you powerful. You gain motivation and energy. You want to create more, which builds momentum and a cycle of positivity. My suggestion is to try and emphasize that feeling as much as you can. Every time you complete something, especially something creative, maximize that feeling of productivity.

How do we do this? There are several things we should do:

1. Utilize as many senses as possible when you achieve something productive. For example: a visual checklist being cleared with an audio “ding” when checked off, then go have a quick reward. For example: eat a cookie. Taste, smell, visual and auditory, all at once.
2. Log your accomplishments and be sure to view them regularly. Admire how much you’ve completed. This could be word count, promotions you’ve done, chapters completed, plots you’ve made, characters you’ve developed, etc. Be sure to take a few minutes to remind yourself how much you’ve created.
3. Get up and move. Related to #1, after you finish something (especially something larger in scope)go move. Leverage this energy! By moving around, going on a walk, dancing, or whatever, you’ll build up even more energy and positive emotions.

There is a few tools I use to help do the three above. I’ll talk about them more in detail later, but there is one in particular I wanted to mention.

This tool is completely free and helps with the first two actions above. Some of you may have heard of it and some of you might use it already. If not, it’s called Wunderlist and you can grab it here. It’s a simple, easy to use program that enables you to keep track of the stuff you need to do (a to-do list) while giving you the visual and audio satisfaction when something is finished. It gives a nice “ding” when you’ve done something and it keeps track of everything you’ve completed. You can easily view these accomplishments by clicking “Completed To Do’s”.

Anyway, I’ve recorded a quick video to demonstrate Wunderlist. I hope you enjoy it!

Catch you guys soon!

Rob

It’s in the back of your mind. You go throughout the day thinking about it. You say to yourself, “Self, when I get home I’m going to sit down and write a chapter or two of my book.” You imagine yourself doing it, you imagine what it will feel like to be finished and you get excited. So, what happens when you get home?

You open whatever writing tool you use and stare at the screen. Or you get caught up in home stuff – dinner needs to be made, the lawn needs mowed, the kids are screaming or guess what? Your favorite TV show just came on.

Damn.

With no energy left, or the big blank screen staring you in the face, you stop. It doesn’t go at all like you imagined. Not a word is added to the page.

Or if you do manage to add a few words to the page, you end up hating whatever you wrote. It’s gross. Terrible. Awful. You write and then rewrite and rewrite some more before you finally just give up.

You quit. You feel defeated. You let yourself down.

The next time you decide you’re going to write, your energy and enthusiasm have dulled some. You experience less motivation than before and before you even sit down, you’ve given up. You just don’t care anymore.

What I’ve just described happens to me far more often than it should and it’s one of the key reasons why I feel I’ve lost control of my life. My job – my business – centers around creation. Creation of words, of images and stories. The creation of code or music. If that work isn’t completed, then the business will ultimately fail.

Back when I started I was a college student. I hated college. I hated a job and after I discovered that, holy crap, you can make money online, I knew my calling was working for myself. I couldn’t – and I still can’t – stand having other people tell me what I need to do and when I need to do it. Sitting in a stiff classroom setting, having a professor doll out boring instruction while I took notes was bad enough. I then had to go work at home. Homework. Blech. And I was paying to do this work.

I had so much motivation…but I also had unlimited amounts of time. I was living on student loan cash and a part time job that the school had. I didn’t have a family, nor did I have any expensive vices such as alcohol. (Heh, that came later) Sitting down and working for myself, even when I didn’t see any immediate income, was a breeze. I was young, motivated, and ready to make it happen. And happen it did.

My first successful campaign was making me 20 to 30 bucks every couple of days promoting Travis Sago’s get your ex back stuff. Back then, EzineArticles was all the rage and small, 250 to 400-word “articles” could land you on Google and get crap tons of traffic. I quickly found out that other people wanted to experience my success. How did I do it? I decided to teach people and I built my first IM product.

That was a 2,000-dollar launch. Pennies for some, but it was a windfall of cash for a broke college student in the process of dropping out. I knew there was something to this and so I pushed hard for more. My next product, Slap EzineArticles, was selected as WSOTD by the Warrior Forum itself. That was a 10,000-dollar launch.

With money, however, comes responsibility.

Seeing my success, I figured I could do it all. Money came in, money went out just as fast. I met a girl. I got married. I moved to an expensive area with a huge rent payment. I did the American thing and racked up massive credit card debt as I figured I could just make more money easily. I then had a child. It then came crashing down.

Eventually, things catch up to you. Debt, family, responsibilities…back when you’re young and it’s only yourself, it seems easy. Maybe it’s not. Maybe you just have more energy, I don’t know. But at least for me, those times seem simpler.

I don’t know how it happened for you, but that is how it happened for me. Regardless of what happened, things must change, that energy and motivation must return. And you must make it happen.

I can’t offer much advice on finding motivation, other than just being tired of stressed or broke. Tired of working for someone else. Desiring change. I think that, perhaps, is something we must all figure out on our own. But what I do know is this:

The more you create, the better you feel. Even if what you created is garbage.

The question, then, is how do you start? How do you get to it?

You start by starting. And not stopping for at least 15 Minutes.

The 15 Minute Hump

I’ve talked about this before in an email I believe, along with a product about writing. It’s called the “hump” and it’s a dreadfully awful thing. It stops you from working, from focusing and from getting stuff done that you really want. What is this hump?

It’s the psychological desire to save your energy for when you’re facing a tiger and need to run or fight. You might think I’m joking about that, but I’m not.

Idleness, procrastination, laziness…it’s named all sorts of things, and the desire to do something else, especially when the task ahead seems daunting, can overrule our motivation and desire to get stuff done – especially when that “stuff” is a 40 chapter, one-hundred-thousand-word novel we want to write.

I’m going to stop you for a second, though, and say this: You are not lazy. No one is lazy. Except for that dude who lives in his parent’s basement playing video games all day long, right? As a gamer myself, I can say this: video games take work. Problem-solving, creativity, and effort are all required to successfully play a game. Building a giant castle in Minecraft or successfully managing a mega-city in SimCity certainly isn’t lazy.

What’s the problem with gaming? What’s the problem with watching TV? Or mowing the lawn? Or managing the family?

Nothing. Until it’s used as an excuse to avoid the real thing we want to do and can make time to do – for whatever reason. It’s hard. It’s scary. Or it’s just massive.

This hump is what causes us to choose other, less cognitive demanding activities or activities that provide a more immediate reward. Video gaming does this. As does seeing a freshly cut lawn or eating a hot plate of straight-out-the-oven cookies. Some of these things we need to do, such as bath the dog or help your child with homework. We use these things as an excuse. The hump wins.

Why 15 Minutes?

I call it the 15 Minute Hump, because that’s the time it takes to defeat it. If you do the activity you’ve been wanting to do for at least 15 minutes, you’ll be “over” the hump. You’ll have the focus and energy to get the rest of the task finished.

Why?

When you work on a single task for fifteen minutes, such as writing, your brain goes into “flow-mode”. Suddenly things get in focus and the activity becomes easier. Words begin to “flow” (ha!) on a page. The plot you designed comes to life as you write. The plan activates.

But it takes time to get into this state…and it can be a nightmare to get into if you’re in the cycle of depression. Trust me, I know.

But it’s real. And it’s been studied. Again. And again.

Before I move on, I do want to say that 15 minutes is an average. It might take you more. It might take you less. But after about 45 minutes, you should be in “the flow” and working hard, with the words flowing on the page.

How to Get Into The Flow

Before I sign off for today, I want to briefly cover getting into this flow – defeating the 15 Minute Hump and hopefully enjoy the benefits of creation.

1.      Break any large task into small tasks first. If you’re writing a novel, break the task down into planning stages (Fractal Method – start with a sentence, then a few paragraphs, then a plot outline, etc.)

2.      Start by writing whatever you want first. No plan – just sit and write something. A fantasy you have or journaling about your day. The point is – write for at least 15 minutes without interruption.

3.      The key to flow – and defeating the 15-minute hump – is no interruption! Lock yourself away, turn off the internet, TV, and anything else that will distract you.

4.      Don’t edit your work the same time you write. Those are two different brain activities. If you’re writing, then write. If you’re editing, edit.

5.      Admit to yourself the first 15 minutes or so will suck. You’ll struggle. It’ll be hard…but once through it, you’ll start to feel immensely better!

6.      Admire the work you’ve done. After half an hour of free writing (or working on your project), look at the word count. I’m looking at mine right now – almost 1600 in less than an hour. WOOT! Use that energy to continue!

Once you break this hump, you’ll feel soooooo good. At almost 1600 words, I feel like I’m on fire! My brain is working, the words are flowing and I’ve been incredibly productive. I feel like I have energy to keep going. I’ve been creating…and creating is breaking my depression.

I hope you guys got something out of this. I know it’s long, but I wanted to type instead of making a video, as I know some of you prefer reading instead of watching.

Now, go break that hump and get in the flow!

We’re all building an income online, right? I mean, in general, we call that business. In Old English, the word means something like…Busy. But different from anxiety or mucking around or preoccupation, more like busy diligently. Working towards something productive. Middle English advances the word to the newer translation “busyness”, or “occupation or state of employment”, eventually landing in the sense of “trade, commercial engagements”.

Business.

For our purposes, I want to take the word back a few hundred years. Busyness – busy, with a purpose. For productivity and usefulness, producing things that people want and need, that provides income and satisfaction to the one producing.

The Cycle of Un-Productivity and Procrastination

I’ve mentioned in past emails and blog posts that I struggle with depression, feeling lonely, useless and like an abject failure. It ends up in a vicious cycle of defeat; I feel bad, so I don’t want to produce. I feel unproductive and depressed because I don’t produce.

You’re unproductive because you don’t feel like you’re productive, which makes you unproductive. That sort of cycle can drag you down fast. It can make you feel guilty, which doesn’t exactly help.

Now granted, you might not have depression and anxiety like I have. I sure hope you don’t because tossing it on the normal flame of procrastination and a general “meh, fuck it” attitude can really destroy a business, one that was highly successful and profitable…and it can destroy it quickly.

For the past year that’s the cycle I’ve been following. For last six months of the year before this one, I was highly productive, and my income was exploding. Before that…another cycle of depression and unproductivity. But during those six months, it was amazing what was achieved.

I had two full time employees, myself, my wife, a full-time customer support person, a web developer and a whole load of books being published. Income was coming in. I had consulting clients, software sales…it was amazing. Until it all came crashing down. I’ll tell that story another time.

So how do we break out of that cycle? How do we pick ourselves up from the vicious, destructive cycle that eats at us? That keeps us from writing the book, keeps us from building something successful?

While I’ve talked a lot about the 15-minute hump when it comes to getting stuff done (and I’ll explore this more in later issues), I want to emphasize something different this time. Beyond just “getting started” and gaining energy.

See, while knowing that it takes my brain about 15 minutes to “warm up” to get into the zone, it takes something more than just getting into the zone. Getting into the zone – defeating those 15 minutes of pain, lack of motivation and frustration is like starting the car. Once the car is started, it runs, right?

Well, until you run out of gas. And the gas that keeps the car running is what I want to talk about in today’s issue.

Just Do What You Love?

I’m not going to lie to you and tell you some bullshit about taking a break, refilling your batteries, or discovering your passion…because I think we all know we can’t all just do what we love. But boy, do self-help preachers love to talk about their passion and, more importantly, your passion.

I can hear them squawking now. “Do your passion! Discover your passion! Or make something you hate be your passion!”

You know what I love?

Going on vacation and traveling, meeting people in bars, laughing, playing video games, writing music for myself, and helping my friends. If we could only make money traveling and drinking in bars, I’d be loaded and successful.

I’m going to cut the crap. What you enjoy the most in life is likely not what will reduce your stress and make you feel successful. What you love and what you become passionate about might not be the same thing.

As I get older I’m starting to realize there is a lot of gray between those areas of love and passion. In fact, I’m 34 years old and I don’t even know what I’m passionate about. Whatever it is, I’m not entirely sure I can be financially successful with it.

And financial success will reduce stress. Reduced stress will allow me to enjoy things like vacations and meeting people. And will allow me to afford to do it.

So, whatever your passion is, whatever you love…realize right now it might not align with what you need to do.

Now, I’m going assume you love writing…or enjoy it enough to want to make money doing it. That’s why you’re here, right? Or at the very least, you think you can make this work somehow. You can make money with self-publishing. That might not be a “love”, but it’s at least an “interest”.

Fine. Let’s go with that. (And no, I’m not going to tell you to somehow make it your passion, my broken brain is fucking clueless about making something a “passion”)

Filling Your Car Up with Gas

So how do we fill our car up? How do we sit down and write a book?

No. Stop.

This isn’t about writing a single book. This is about writing all of them. This is about promoting all of them. This is about doing what is necessary to make sure you can make a full time, possibly better than living wage from self-publishing.

This is about becoming a powerhouse of productivity and becoming effective, without burn out, at building an entire empire of books supporting you and your passions and the things that you love. This is about doing everything you need to do, from research to collecting the money, to make yourself financially successful.

And you fill this engine of success up with four things:

1. Achievable, monitorable goals and milestones.
2. Systems that support success (including automation)
3. Focused work
4. Writing.

Number four is a bit of a “duh”, right? I mean, we’re in the business of publishing books. So, no shit, Sherlock?

The one thing you can do to get more done is by writing more. But, I bet you haven’t thought about this…and when I explain this, I think you’re going to be blown away.

Writing goes beyond just writing books and promotional emails, ad copy or Amazon descriptions and blog posts. It involves everything you need to do to build a successful independent publishing business. Everything.

• Those achievable goals don’t become achievable until you write them down.
• Those systems won’t get implemented…unless you write them down.
• That focused work, the money makers? Books, promotional emails…that’s writing of course.
• Those systems…that support success? Writing. Writing lists, prioritizing, checking off, and writing again.

Do you want to fill your car engine up with motivation and success?

ABW. Always. Be. Writing.

Write down everything and be damn specific with it. What do I mean?

I am primarily talking about managing my day and keeping track of everything I must do and organizing it by priority.

I use some software to help me manage my daily activities. One such activity is writing this very newsletter. Do you want to know what this checklist looks like?

• Brainstorm Idea
• Research
• Compile Research
• Select Promotional Item/Link to Lead to
• Gather Links and Back Up Material
• Organize Material
• Plan Newsletter
• Write Article

I spent 5 minutes putting that list together and writing it down. I am also checking it (and the rest of my list) a lot. In fact, I keep it up on my desktop indefinitely because I want to constantly be reminded what is going on in my life today.

Now you might be thinking this is a bunch of hogwash. Everyone says “use a list!” Hear me out…

Do you know how satisfying it is to look back at your previous week and see how much shit you finished?

Those baby steps that I’ve broken them down in to keeps these massive projects manageable. It makes me realize that, yes, I can do it. I can take on these massive, long term projects and I can stay organized and systemized.

Because I keep writing. I’m spending my entire day writing in this damn list. Adding to it, checking off, and organizing.

I never used to do this. I would just haphazardly do projects, not sure of what I need to do next, get burnt out half way through and quit.

In fact, it’s only something I’ve started here recently, and it’s made a huge difference so far. I’m quickly becoming far more productive because I’m constantly going back to my main list and adding more details to these projects. I’m realizing, as I go along, the steps I need to take to complete a major task. And so, I add it to the list.

(BTW – I need to pause here…I’m using software that has a repeating daily task list, which I can customize to repeat whenever…so weekly, daily, certain days, etc.

This is part of the #2 bullet, systemizing. I write it down, I don’t need to write it down again. It saves me time in the long run!)

I take time every morning, especially Sunday nights/Monday mornings to get my shit together. Write in my lists. I then stop throughout the day and write more in my list.

Always. Be Writing.

This has a side benefit of training my body to write quicker and to think less. Because I’m writing down all my thinking into a nice, neat list which keeps track of everything, I can actively get it all off my mind. This means when I do major focused production time, I get more done without stress.

Why is Writing the Gas?

The gas of productivity is writing and it is for every industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re making toilet paper or high-end computers. Making video games or just playing them on YouTube for advertising dollars. The fact is…writing is gas.

Add stuff to your to-do list, constantly. Constantly be writing in this list and constantly be checking stuff off.

You write, you succeed.

Why? I explained it a bit above, but I want to make it clear here before we sign off for today.

1. Writing in a to-do list…a detailed and organized to-do list…takes these individual tasks off your brain and allows you to focus on things individually. I will explain more about this in the next issue. (Going back to focused work)
2. Checking things off from this to-do list feels damn good. It powers motivation. And by continuing to work with this to-do list, it trains your brain that being productive feels good. It builds habits.
3. Writing is the key to success because it enables you to set plans down in stone. It enables you to share these plans with others. It trains you to communicate plans better.
4. Obviously…writing as a publisher makes sense, even if you aren’t writing the books directly.

So always be writing things down. Let the writing fill up your gas tank. Then when you figuratively start your engine, you will last through the entirety of the project. Because writing down goals, milestones and to-do lists will keep you on track and focused.

In the next issue we will discuss focused work. Then we will talk about systems that make you successful and prop up your work ethic, keep you working even when you don’t feel like, and enable you to have others do the work for you!

The issue after that – goals and milestones. How to plan your independent publishing business so that it works for success. Just remember…

All of this takes writing. ABW my friends, always be writing.

Be sure to comment below! If you have any questions, feel free to post them and I’ll try to answer.

You know, I thought I had magic powers. Move things with my mind, conjure things from nowhere, summon powerful spirits of air and fire to rain destruction down on my enemies. As a kid you sure can imagine a lot, especially when you play video games and watch cartoons.

I don’t think I ever grew out of that phase, though. When I got older, I watched Star Wars. It went from magic to The Force. I was a jedi, noble and true, capable of wielding such great powers that I could bring down a starship with the force alone. I built makeshift lightsabers and battled evil sith lords and always saved the day.

As I got a bit older, I fancied myself a genius. I wanted to build The Enterprise from Star Trek. I tried to figure out ways to make faster than light travel a thing. It was all good fun, but there was a common pattern, I really wanted to be special. To have something special.

Of course,  I became a teenager and life began its dream crushing phase, where you learn that perhaps you aren’t as awesome as you think you might be. I discovered that I only really loved social interaction and music: band. The rest? Well, math, english and writing could all take a hike. (Except for creative writing. That I excelled at.)

What I didn’t realize at the time was I do have a special power. It’s something everyone has, but very few recognize in themselves. We tend to see it in athletes the easiest, but we sometimes notice it in master musicians and performers. We usually can’t put our finger on it because to most people, it appears to look like luck.

But it’s not luck.

Now I’m going to stop here and say that we usually think it’s just training. Training the mind and body to it’s peak condition and that’s why these athletes and performers to seemingly inhuman levels of mastery. But it’s deeper than that.

It’s not training. Really.

I mean, sure, training helps. Habits are powerful, and they can push us to do great and awesome things, especially over a longer period of time. But again, it goes deeper than training. It’s something that starts before the training begins and works hand in hand with training.

It’s the juice, the magic power, the power of the mind that drives the training, drives the productivity. It drives the business man to make his millions. It drives the athlete to win games. It drives the guitar player to be a virtuoso. It’s The Force of the mind and it can move figurative mountains.

The Force of the Mind

I’m using this force power right now as I write. I know I am, I can feel it. I feel different, motivated, energized. Focused.

You know you are in this Force of Mind when you are working. When everything else falls away and all distractions disappear as barely audible background noise. I can only see the words I’m typing on the screen; it’s like a trance. My fingers are letting the words travel freely from my brain to the keyboard and I’m doing so without thought, because I know what I’m going to type.

I hear the things going on. My daughter has some YouTube video up right now; some silly song playing. But while I’m conscious of it, it doesn’t affect me at all. My other pc monitors, while in my peripheral vision, aren’t even registering as there.

I am in my force of mind. Focused, 100%, on what is going on. And in this moment, I can’t stop doing what I’m doing. I’m being productive at 120% capacity.

Right now, I’m tracking how many words I’m writing an hour. I’m currently at a little over 2400. Seem impossible? It’s because I’ve discovered this powerful Force of Mind focus mode and I know how to tap into it. I know how to bind my mind to do my bidding and boy, is it effective.

This magic force of mind has been called all sorts of things. The Zone, Good Luck, Single-Tasking, Focused, and more. Generally, people sort of scoff at this. “Psh, focused. Yeah I can focus too.”

Except you probably haven’t really been focused much. Generally our species, modern humans, multitask way, way, WAY too much. We have a million distractions going on all at once. We have TV’s on, radio’s on, people buzzing around us, stopping at our desk and asking us questions, our phones demanding our attention and more.

We might be trying to do two things at once: cook dinner and write, perhaps. I’ve done it before, in fact I do it too much. But while you are doing two things at once, you are not working efficiently. Your mind is not in the zone because it is not committed to the task right in front of you.

The Problem with Multitasking

Don’t believe me? Track your word count when you write next and are doing something like cooking dinner, something like having to get up to stir veggies or pasta. Keep track of how fast you write.

Then, later when you are without distractions, spend an hour writing without anything else going on. Let your mind just focus 100% on getting words on a page. Don’t stop to edit, don’t stop to think, just let it flow. And be sure to give yourself the full hour of writing. No matter what, let the words flow. And do NOT let any distractions in. Tell your family to take care of themselves for once, shut your phone off, close the door, turn off the internet and write.

Even untrained, you’ll notice a few hundred words per hour difference. It happens because of The Zone. The force of mind and it’s amazing the difference it makes, especially over time.

Sure, you might not think a few hundred words an hour makes a huge difference. But imagine it over the course of 10 hours of writing this week. If you get even a modest 200 words an hour increase…that’s 2000 words more! That’s an entire chapter written that you didn’t have before!

But take that even further…over 40 hours. That’s four more chapters than before. Four.

A single change from unfocused, all over the place work to pure, delightful focused work can yield a multitude of better results. Because not only are you better focused and writing faster, you are also writing better. And you are going to feel better too.

The Natural Drug of Your Brain

I’m going to give you a drug right now. You want to forget your stresses and problems? You want to feel a natural high from being more productive than you’ve ever been? Get into this Zone and stay in it for a good hour.

I guarantee you you’ll feel better than ever before.

You will never feel so accomplished, so productive, so motivated, so energized. It’s an incredible experience. It’s a drug and if you let it, it can be addicting, especially because you become so focused, you forget about your problems.

Forget alcohol, get into The Zone!

Of course, there is the actual, real benefit of getting into the Zone. You get more done, you get more done, you’re more likely to make money. You write more, more books and products, more money you’ll ultimately make, right?

Which…will lower your stress. Lowering your stress will make you more likely to be productive. Which helps bring about the Cycle of Focus. Positivity, less stress, and high emotions.

Getting Into The Zone – The 15 Minute Hump

There are three demons, though, who seek to drain our strength and prevent us from getting into this Zen State of being. These demons are so named Procrastination, Self-doubt and Self-distraction.

They will try to steal your focus, rob you of your happiness and prevent you from making any real, serious life changes. Fuck them.

Luckily for us, they are easily defeated because we have three secret powers that can defeat them. These powers are:

• The 15 Minute Warm Up
• Who Cares Attitude
• The Ability to Say No

The 15 minute warm up defeats the demon of procrastination. It takes roughly 15 minutes (sometimes less, sometimes more) to get into The Zone of Focus. Knowing this, you can force yourself to sit down and write, (free write, as a warm up exercise) which enables you to get into the Zone.

Just remember – 15 Minutes. That’s all it takes and the lazy feeling of procrastination peels away. It’s a sucky feeling, I know. But once you recognize and tell yourself “in 15 minutes, I’m going to be riding high and getting stuff done!”, well…you tend to want to do it.

The demon of self-doubt is sometimes worse than the one of procrastination because he feeds into your fears. The fears that you aren’t good enough or that people will hate what you do.

He is easy enough to defeat, however. Just remember this: just because you have stuff written doesn’t mean you have to show anyone. If it’s garbage writing, that’s fine. You’ve practiced your writing and that’s all. No one needs to see it.

So who cares.

This demon will disappear with this attitude. You are writing for yourself and no one else. Don’t be afraid, because you are still in control.

Finally, the demon of self-distraction is the worst. He’s the one that will tell you…go check Facebook. Go check your phone. Open the door and let the kids in…stop what you’re doing and go do something else.

This is the hardest demon to control because he sometimes appears in outside distractions. But you have full control over him – you simply say “no”.

Sometimes you might have to set up systems to stop him. You might have to turn your phone off, close your door, turn the internet off (or download programs that block websites) and the like. But the great thing is…once you are 15 minutes into your writing, the demon slinks away and is defeated. Because in the Zone State, you those demons cannot possibly defeat you. You are too focused on here and now!

Maximizing the Zone

A couple of things I want to briefly touch on while talking about The Zone.

It’s called “focused” or “single-tasking” for a reason. You aren’t doing thirty things at once and that includes writing related things.

You know, things like stopping and editing your work. That’s for after you are finished writing. Or planning your work. Or thinking about what you want to say. (That’s for BEFORE you start writing.)

Yes, when you’re writing…you are writing and that’s it. No formatting, no editing, no planning, no thinking. Writing.

The same thing happens when you are planning. You plan what you’re going to write about…but you don’t write (much. Most of what you are doing is thinking). When you are editing…you read and edit. You don’t write (much).

You are grouping activities together and you don’t let these activities cross boundaries. Doing so breaks focus, gets you out of the zone and means you must take another 15 minutes to get back into it!

Remember that secret. Breaking focus, including to do related (but not the same) activities will require you to take another 15 minutes to get back into the Zone and that will slow you down.

Be Excited for The Zone

This should be getting you excited. I know, it might not seem like much. Single-tasking is well known and getting focused, in-zone work has been talked about before.

But, I think we don’t let ourselves get excited over things like this anymore. We neglect the magical experiences of the mundane and we forget to reconnect with what makes us human, the experience of life. When you’re in The Zone, you feel everything melt away.

Recognize that feeling and let yourself be excited by it. Because it means you actively know what’s going on, you can actively summon it at any time, and you know it means you’re going to get a lot more done than ever before.

Of course, by letting yourself get excited by The Zone, you’re more likely to want to achieve this Zen State of high productivity. Which, again, will make you feel great about yourself. It does wonders for the self-esteem.

Then you can look back at all you’ve accomplished and realize that you’ve built Rome.

Whoa.

That’s right. Congrats, 10 years older you…you’ve built Rome. Perhaps you’ve built a book empire or maybe you’ve done something else. I don’t know. But your productivity was kicked off by The Zone. Focused, single-tasked work.

Cherish it. Be excited by it. And welcome to the future you.

Thanks for reading, please comment below if you have any questions!

According to Wikipedia…

“A tornado is a violently rotating column of air, in contact with the ground, either pendant from a cumuliform cloud or underneath a cumuliform cloud, and often (but not always) visible as a funnel cloud.”

Chaos theory is one of the driving factors of the weather (and in many systems that appear to be somewhat chaotic). Our inability to know all the details that affect the weather makes it extremely difficult to predict. The weather is more than large scale wind patterns such as jet streams, cold fronts or pressure changes…things on the ground and in the air, in all areas around the world, has an active effect on the atmosphere.

And that’s the problem. We don’t know the details of every square inch of the current condition in all locations. But it goes deeper than that, we don’t know many of the important details of the very atoms that make up movement in the air.

This problem is studied in a field called knowledge granulation. It could also be called resolution.

To explain this, let’s look at the TV. We all talk about resolution and definition and…yeah. The higher the numbers, the better, right?

Well, yes, to an extent. The resolution – the number of tiny dots crammed into a square inch of a tv screen – determines how vivid and detailed the image can be. The higher the resolution (or DPI in this case) means a higher-quality image.

It’s the same thing with knowledge. WAY back in the early days of weather forecasting, we relied on observations every several dozen miles or more, with large coverage gaps. We were operating with low knowledge granulation, low resolution. As science and communication has gotten better, the more weather tracking instruments per set of miles has increased.

But more than that, so has the type of data we take in. At first, it was just observations (wind speed, direction, current weather, rain totals, barometric pressure, etc.) telegraphed to central forecasting offices. Then we invented radar, which increased our knowledge gap dramatically. After that was satellite images, faster communication speeds, more weather stations…Our guesses about what the weather was going to do got better.

That’s just it. Guesses. Scientific guesses, to be sure, based on what we know about physics and local conditions, but still ultimately a guess.

It’s naturally chaotic, or appearing chaotic. As our knowledge grows and our ability to observe at a better resolution increases, that chaos appears less and less.

So, What The Hell Does This Have to do With My Publishing Business?

I’m glad you asked!

This has everything to do with your business because a business operates on the same basic principles the weather does. It can appear (and feel) random or chaotic until you really start to understand what makes a business tick.

If I had to guess, I would guess you likely feel like your earnings are sporadic at best, uncontrollable, and that everything feels overwhelming, right? Just enough to make you want to throw your hands up and quit, am I right?

Maybe some of you reading this don’t feel that way, but I would wager a large percentage of even successful publishers sometimes feel like they need a little less chaos in their publishing business. So much to do, so little time to do it in…and that’s with having some help around!

I know I feel that way a lot and getting that feeling under control requires you to get the business under control. And that, as you might guess, requires decreasing the knowledge gap in your business.

No, I’m not talking about learning new marketing systems, new ways of writing, or the like…I’m talking about finding out what makes your business successful and setting up systems that tap those traits.

What if you’re business isn’t successful yet? That’s fine, I’ll hand you what you need to know. The basics:

• A good book.
• A way to get eyeballs on that book.
• A way to capture those eyeballs in one spot so you can tell them to go look at the books you write and release in the future.

Each one of those bullets can have entire systems built to support it, systems that provide feedback and self-correction, which will make you money.

Let’s Talk Productivity

To reduce the chaos in your business, you need to increase productivity on things that really matter, cut out the stuff that doesn’t, and increase the ability to make more money for less invested effort (including dollars/labor).

You need to shrink the knowledge gap and, here’s a hint, you can shrink the knowledge gap or increase the resolution, in two ways, and you’re going to absolutely love this.

The first is the most obvious. Learn the factors that affect your success and create systems that support those factors. That’s the most obvious ones.

The second way is to cut out worthless knowledge, activities and goals that won’t do squat to your bottom line (or, in general, won’t affect it much).

Yes, put another, I said “Do less.”

You reduce the gap by reducing the number of moving parts you need to watch and build systems for. This will reduce the seeming chaos in your business by simply saying “no”.

Granted, you can’t say “no” to everything. Then you wouldn’t have enough stuff going on to have a business. What you need to do is determine what really brings in the money and focus on building systems around that activity, to the point that it’s completely automatic.

Then you can work on expansion.

The One Trait All Successful Publishers Have

You want to know a secret trait that all successful publishers share?

It isn’t “hard work”, “intelligence”, “adaptability”. Those aren’t secrets, per se.

No, the one trait all successful publishers share is simplicity. They don’t have 500 things going on. They have a single system that works and they work that system.

Here are some examples:

• Richard writes for clients. He gets paid 40k bucks/book he writes for his clients and he gets these clients by writing articles daily. He puts these articles on LinkedIn and Facebook.
  That’s it.
  The traffic goes to his website and he gets 5 to 10 leads a day. Bam.
• Sarah releases short books on Kindle. She writes several a week and releases them. She pays fiverr gigs for traffic and collects the leads and mails them daily, promoting herself and her other books.
• David has writers writing books in certain romantic niches. He releases these books for free through Kindle Unlimited. He pays for traffic with Facebook. That’s it.

Each one of these authors focuses on THREE THINGS:

• A great book.
• A way to get eyeballs.
• Collecting these eyeballs in one place.

But more than that – they only focus on ONE THING for each category. For Sarah, it’s short books. Richard, it’s books for clients. For David, it’s hiring top quality writers.

Traffic? Sarah uses fiverr gigs, which is where her potential readers are. Richard writes articles and puts them where his potential clients are. David knows his target audience on FB and uses ads to get them to see his books.

All of them have an email list that they mail regularly.

One thing. One system. Simplicity.

Figuring Out This Is a Bitch

That’s the good news. Keep it simple and build systems around one or two things – your products, your traffic sources and your follow up.

But there is bad news, and this is where the other traits such as hard-working and stubbornness come into play.

If you’re just starting off, you won’t really know what systems work for you, what options work for you, until you go try. Yes, you gotta try; this shit won’t just work itself you know!

It took Sarah two years before she saw consistent, reliable sales. It took David and Richard months before they landed real money. Time, consistency, hard-work, and stubbornness is all needed.

Don’t let the bad news scare you, though. Because if you dig in daily, you’ll get there quicker than you might think.

Building Systems

This newsletter is already getting a bit long, so we’re going to call it a night for now. Yes, I know, we haven’t even really touched on what a system is or how to build one.

I think that will be the topic of the next newsletter, a part two if you will.

What I really wanted to cover was the fact that simplicity in your business is the key to making this work and cutting out shit you don’t need to be working is oftentimes more important that all the work you think you need to be doing.

That lays the groundwork for what we will be discussing next time.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next issue! Remember to comment below:

“…It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

The force is an energy field and like all energy fields, it is everywhere. Or, well, it would be if it were real. You know what else is everywhere that, well, totally is just like the force, but real? (And almost as powerful, though in a subtler way.)

Systems.

A system has two definitions, according to Google’s dictionary:

• A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole.
• A set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.

In the last issue, we talked a lot about chaos and the knowledge gap, how the less you know about something, the more it feels chaotic. You don’t know or understand all the variables involved, so you cannot predict with accuracy what will happen.

One major feature and advantage of a well-designed system is that will provide feedback and knowledge. It will reduce or eliminate unknown (and unknowable) variables as much as possible, while seeking to work and predict the knowable ones.

And if there is such a thing as a well-designed system, then there exist poorly designed systems. Or even worse, systems that aren’t designed at all. It is possible for a system to exist without any thought put into it at all, and for us humans, those are the worst.

In fact, your entire life is a system, whether you know it or not. From the car you drive, to the job you do, to the habits you have formed…everything is a system. Some of them you have designed or helped designed. Some of them have happened naturally. Some of them are well-designed and others aren’t. This is true for everyone.

The methods and processes you follow in your life are either poorly designed, not at all designed or well-designed and how chaotic your life feels are dependent on how many of these systems are poorly designed. How many fires you are constantly having to put out all has to do with how many poor systems exist in your life.

I’m not judging, by the way. It’s virtually impossible to design perfect systems in every aspect of our lives. Even the most put together person is going to face a clusterfuck at some point, no matter what. While we might have the best designed systems, there are things outside our control that we cannot predict.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Well-designed systems can be built for all aspects of your life and it should be a solid goal of yours to build these and work on them. Doing so will reduce the stress and allow you to be more productive.

What Is a Well-Designed System?

If a system is a method of doing something, in some organized fashion, then a well-designed system is a method of doing something in a well-organized fashion.

But I personally like to expand the definition a bit more. A well-designed system does these things:

• Achieves a predictable result, within a certain accuracy
• Provides feedback for improvement
• Can be automated in some fashion (by using software, a machine, or another human, etc.)

Those are the three basic requirements. A few expanded ones:

• Should be as simple as possible. A six-year-old should be able to get the gist of it.
• Has a definite and hard goal attached.
• Based on a production-result, NOT an income result (when talking about business), though an income result should be predicted with decent accuracy.

What do I mean by a production result? In short – the system should produce something that is tangible and predictable.

I’m writing this newsletter issue, right? The production result of the system used to write this newsletter is the newsletter itself. Now, do I have an income result attached to it? In short, yes…sort of.

The newsletter is not a direct income gaining activity. It’s a branding activity and customer relationship activity, one that will help increase the income-predicting effectiveness of other systems…such as product launches, sales webinars, special deals, and more.

It’s a system that supports the business system, but the goal is not directly tied to sales, it’s directly tied to production: getting a great quality newsletter issue out the door and into your hands!

But what about systems that are tied to income?

First, the goal needs to be about production. If you’re writing a book, the goal should be about producing the book. The system should be designed so that the book is produced:

• As fast and as affordable possible, without neglecting quality.
• As organized as possible, so that the top bullet becomes a reality.

Okay, perfect. So that’s the main goal – what is the predictive income goal of the system? Well, mainly to sell books. But…how? And how many?

The system that answers that question is the marketing system behind that book. Where and how are you getting your traffic and what are you saying to that traffic so that you sell copies of the book…that’s the key.

The marketing system does indeed include the book. In fact, the book production system is part of the larger marketing system that drives sales. The marketing system, which includes book production, should be able to give you a complete picture now.

You know that the Fiverr gig you always buy sends out to 4000 people. Based on tracking from the past, about 200 to 500 go to the book page. Of those 200 to 500, about 10 to 20 will buy the book.

So, what happens if 10 or 20 don’t? Let’s look at the two possible scenarios.

Scenario A: more than 20 purchase the book. The question becomes…why?

Options are: better written newsletter to the list, a better targeted book, a better cover or title, a better description, more reviews, or a bigger list.

From this list, we can eliminate. Contact the fiverr gig runner and ask him:

1. Has your list sized improved?
2. What did you send to your list that garnered more sales?

You could likely eliminate 2 options. If the words were basically identical to all his other promotions and his list size hasn’t increased, then…guess what? Something about your book has resonated with that audience better.

We are now down to cover, title, description, preview or reviews. If the reviews are the same as before…then it’s a better cover, title description or preview. Start comparing the options.

Once you feel you’ve found the key components, what do you do?  You test.

Change an older book’s on-page marketing materials to match the new book you promoted and run the promotion again for the older book. Watch the results. Keep going, keep doing. The lessons you learn decrease the knowledge gap and make it easier for you to build a predictive business.

Now scenario B is the same as A, just in reverse. Lower sales…you go through the same process.

Notice what I did?

A well-designed system tracks results and can improve upon them. From our income result, we can improve our production result. We can improve our systems to improve the quality of the moving parts being produced and we can do it on a timetable.

Keep It Simple

Okay, I will admit…that was some pretty heavy, brainy shit. Really, thinking of systems is just a way to organize everything you are doing in your business and recognizing the patterns in production and its results.

Let’s keep it simple:

• Design your systems so they provide feedback.
• Be conscious of what you are doing when implementing these systems.
• Find ways to improve the system.
• Don’t take on more than you need.

A simple publishing system doesn’t need to be massively complex, it just needs a few things:

• A way to produce a book.
• A way to get eyeballs to that book.
• A way to keep track of those eyeballs so it makes it easier/cheaper to get those same eyeballs back to other books.

Making it stupid simple, all you need is a system to produce books, a singular system to get traffic and a system to keep that traffic around.

One system for each.

For example: Facebook marketing might be your traffic system. Perfect! That means you don’t need (at least to start), an SEO system, a video system, an article system…until you’re ready to grow.

Perfect that system until you are ready to add on to it.

Building the System

Okay, before we sign off here, let’s briefly talk about building a system if you’ve never done it before. It’s surprisingly easy and you can do it too.

1. Isolate one single thing you want to achieve…say writing a book.
2. But go in depth…and identify the TYPE of book you want (fiction, nonfiction, short book, long book, low-content book, etc.)
3. Research all that goes into writing that type of book.
4. With the research in hand, break down the tasks needed to write that book.
5. Guess the time it would take to complete each task for writing that book.
6. Set a schedule based on those times.
7. Work the schedule.
8. Track your word counts and production results. Improve.
9. Give book to beta readers and glean feedback for writing improvements.
10. Repeat the cycle.

Example – writing non-fiction how-to products:

1. Dog training
2. Short, how-to guides.
3. Through my research, I’ve found I need/should include:
   1. Techniques and images demonstrating them
   2. Case studies/funny examples
   3. An overview of what needs to be achieved
   4. An introduction and places to promote my other books
4. The tasks needed and time taken:
   1. Research new book – 2 hours
   2. Plan book – 1 hour
   3. Gather images – 3 hours
   4. Gather example stories – 1 to 3 hours
   5. Write book – 4 to 6 hours
   6. Edit book – 3 hours
   7. Format and publish – 1 hour
5. Monday: research and planning
6. Tuesday: resource gathering
7. Wednesday: writing
8. Thursday: Writing
9. Friday: editing
10. Week 2: Hand over to beta readers
11. Week 2: Gather feedback and improve

See how that went? I now have an organized system for a book. You now know exactly what you need to do and how to do it. If there is any part of the process that you aren’t sure about…say finding the source materials, then research and study is needed.

Now, what if you find out that your times are off, it takes longer or shorter on some tasks…if that’s the case, then modify the system! Oh, and congratulations…because you’re tracking your time, you’re improving the system and becoming more predictive about the things you need to do!

The chaos is diminishing. Of course, you had to start with a guess, but you still did it. The guess turned into a more accurate guess and so forth. But you learned, and that learning provides power.

These systems will help support everything you do in life. And in the final issue in this series, we’re going to talk about the final thing that ties all this in together – that will help you be more productive and more successful. Milestones and goals.

When you add those in, you’ll have the motivation and the tools necessary to achieve it all!

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!