Motivational Blog Posts

Let me guess. When you walk in your front door, there’s a living room with a couch, a television, a coffee table, and maybe a couple of side tables and armchairs.

Then there’s your bedroom. Bed, two nightstands, dresser (or two or three), mirror …

Kitchen: a table with some chairs around it.

Am I close?

You, my friend, are trapped by convention and don’t even know it.

About three years ago, in desperate need of a change of pace, I sold almost everything I owned and wandered around the country for six months living on friends’ couches. (I’m a nomad at heart.) One night I found myself in Portland, and decided to stay there.

Since I was still traveling 90% of the time (my cat sitter was only half-joking that I put her through college), my new apartment came together very slowly. When I was home for a few days at a time, I needed the area to work best for me. With a clean palette to work on, I was intrigued when I finally took a step back and saw how I had come to use the space versus how I would have set it up traditionally.

For example:

• I put eight dry-erase boards up around the living room area and hung my inboxes on the wall next to them. (It was only later that I read about David Allen’s admiration for a friend who converted his living room into his office.)
• The kitchen counter, which opened into the living room, became the perfect spot for the printer and was the perfect height to work on my laptop.
• Instead of a chair, I use a stability ball, or I stand. (Burns more calories!)
• When I first moved in, I threw a couple of quilts down on the floor as a makeshift bed. It’s just comfortable enough for me to sleep through the night, but it definitely does not encourage lounging in bed in the morning. Perfect!
• I have no furniture in my 2BR apartment in Portland. None, zip, nada.

For comparison’s sake, I keep a second (studio) apartment in Utah. This apartment has a table with four chairs (stools, actually), an armchair, a nightstand with built-in light, a futon, and a garment rack.

Which do you think is easier to keep clean: a small studio or a large two-bedroom?

Answer: the two-bedroom, by far, precisely because I don’t have unnecessary furniture cluttering it up.

Aside from the actual sticker price, factor in all the hidden costs of furniture – the time it takes to clean, walking around the couch instead of walking directly across the room (the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, after all), replacing or tightening a screw, laundering covers, removing stains, spraying Febreze, wondering if the curtains match the bedskirt…

My biggest gripe against furniture is having to vacuum around it. With three long-haired cats, I vacuum every other day. Back when I had an apartment full of furniture (and five long-haired cats), facing the prospect of moving the sofa, tables, chairs, etc. to get underneath them was daunting, and usually meant the task was put off until I couldn’t stand it anymore. All for a set of living room tables I never even put anything on!

Is your furniture helping you or hindering you?

In sum, why furniture is more evil than Google:

• You don’t have to vacuum around Google
• Google makes it faster, not slower, to get from point A to point B
• Google only costs you your soul; furniture costs real money
• Google always matches your curtains
• You don’t need chemicals to keep Google clean (just SafeSearch!)
• Your cats cannot claw Google to death

Disclaimer: I make decent money. I am not slovenly and I clean up well for cocktail parties. I have (really amazing) friends. Sharing that you don’t have furniture is not a cool thing to do. People make assumptions about you. Funny how furniture can be a source of social anxiety.

I’ve now upgraded to a two-story, three-bedroom unit, and I still have no furniture. (I really wanted skylights. Portland thunderstorms + skylights = Marina’s personal heaven.) I may very well cave in and buy a mattress and a couch after moving to the new unit. But when I do, at least I’ll be aware of what it’s costing me.

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… is the one that works best for you.

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While ideally you want to avoid a traditional schedule and keep working until you get too tired, there are plenty of times when you need to stay up longer than your body would like — or even times when you need to forego sleep altogether.

Even with my current 8-4, I try to keep my edge by pulling at least one all-nighter a week. As I’ve learned from Twitter, I’m not alone: Justin likes Sundays; I like Sundays or Wednesdays.

Here’s how to stay up tonight and stay alert tomorrow:

Caffeine — But Not Too Much Caffeine. Stave off your caffeine consumption until you really feel like you need it. Try to space your caffeination out to avoid getting too strung out. I usually sip a venti iced coffee over the course of a couple hours and supplement with a weak cup of coffee or a few cups of tea in the wee morning hours. When the “real” day begins, I have another venti iced coffee.

Eat Light. A big dinner will lead to a serious energy slump that can easily stop a productive night before it even begins. Snack every three hours instead. If you need a short break, cook something instead of resting — it will keep you alert.

It’s All In Your Head. The less you think about the fact that you’re supposed to be asleep, the harder it will be to stay awake. Pretend 8pm is 8am and act accordingly.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable. If you’re in your favorite t-shirt and bunny slippers, you’re not going to work as hard. Remember, it’s mostly mindset!

Don’t Nap! If you’re an experienced napper and you know that you can wake up after 20 minutes with no tempation to lie back down “for five more minutes,” go ahead and risk it. For the rest of us: No Napping!!

Blast Some Music. If your energy really starts to wane, put in your headphones and play an upbeat song or two — loudly. This always gives me an energy surge. (I’ll come clean — awful as it is, “Gimme More” by Britney Spears is one of my favorites for getting a jolt. I also like “Some People” by Linda Eder, “Stand” by Rascal Flatts, and “Fighter” by Christina Aguilera.)

Stay Positive the Next Day. The worst thing to do is to dwell on the fact that you didn’t sleep the night before. Pretend like you did. (Did I mention it’s all about mindset yet?) Don’t complain. Instead, be pleased and excited about the extra work you got in.

and my secret foolproof strategy:

Omega-3s Are Your Friends. Early on in the evening, I’ll eat a small bowl of pasta with a heaping tablespoon of flaxseed oil as the sauce. (Other good sources include walnuts and cold-water fish, but flaxseed oil really packs a punch.) I’ve tried all-nighters with and without flaxseed oil, and my energy simply soars on pasta nights. Flaxseed oil isn’t the tastiest food on the planet, but it’s not that bad, and it’s easy to hide in other foods if you don’t like it.

What keeps you up?

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As an entrepreneur and productivity guru, I read information on how to wake up early all the time. There are countless tips, articles, and even entire blogs dedicated to the topic.

It seems like everyone’s striving for an earlier wakeup time. Getting up before 6am for 30 consecutive days is even one of my own personal goals.

I am nocturnal by nature, and while I’ve always been highly productive, waking up before the sun rises is always touted as bequeathing supernatural levels of energy and progress. On those days when my sleep cycle rotated in such a way that I was waking up on a “normal” schedule for a few days, it did seem like I was able to get more done during those daylight hours.

Now, for the past six months, I’ve given up my freelance entrepreneur lifestyle to take an on-site assignment for one of my main clients. (It ends this month.) This has involved my having to physically appear in an office between 7am and 9am Monday through Friday, and often at least being available by phone by those hours on weekends too.

Here’s the funny thing: despite waking up early each and every day, my productivity has plummeted.

Why Daylight Only Feels More Productive

Productivity as a whole is a hard thing to measure objectively – at least compared to our total potential for productivity during a given timeframe. Setting clear goals with measurable criteria helps, but there’s no definitive way to know that today’s eight 400-word articles, hour at the gym, and freshly baked ciabatta bread equaled 87.5% of our total possible output for the last 24 hours.

Instead, productivity is measured in general terms – how ahead or behind we are on various deadlines (total number, difficulty, and feasibility of said deadlines notwithstanding), or, even more generally, how productive we feel we were at the end of the day. Herein lies the myth that waking early is a conduit to greater personal growth.

Much as I wish everything were open 24/7, the fact of the matter is that many of our most tangible, measurable tasks need to be done during regular business hours. Grocery shopping, getting a money order, stopping by the DMV – checking off a chunk of errands on our Next Actions lists just feels so much more important than “wrote article #36 while sitting in my pajamas at the kitchen table,” even if said article is what paid for those groceries in the first place.

How Waking Up Early ROBS You of Your Productivity

Think back to that last time you were in a total state of flow, working on a project that truly excited you, not caring when (or whether) you were going to eat or sleep again, wondering where the last eight hours flew by.

These flow states cannot be triggered on and off with a switch (although there are ways of encouraging their frequency). When you’re in flow, you want—and need—to stay in flow for as long as possible.

In order to wake up early on a consistent basis, you need to go to bed early. Going to bed early prevents you from entering flow.

Just the idea of needing to wake up early the next morning can stop flow in its tracks. If I have a great idea for an e-book or a new product or service at 9pm, and I know I have to be up at 5am, I’m probably not even going to get started on fleshing out my idea because I know that I’ll be tired and miserable all the next day if I don’t get any sleep the night before.

This is how people get trapped in mediocrity for their entire lives. Do you want to be trapped in mediocrity?

I didn’t think so (or you wouldn’t be reading this!).

What You Get When You DON’T Wake Up Early

When you ignore conventional schedules and instead let your passion and energy levels be your guide:

• Whole new periods of time will open up to you
• You’ll be infinitely more well-rested but sleep five or six times a week instead of seven
• Reach your goals faster by maximizing the amount of time you spend in flow state
• Enjoy more time with friends and loved ones
• Ignore distractions like the postal carrier, sales calls, and the constant flow of email – check everything during off-peak hours when you can get more done in less time

Everyone Else Does NOT Wake Up Early

Hop on Twitter at 3am tonight. See who’s up talking. Know that YOU are missing out on those conversations, those ideas, and that energy while you are asleep.

You are missing out every single night.

Don’t Just Take My Word For It…

Spend this next week on your usual schedule of waking early. (This works best if you have two consecutive weeks of similar work ahead of you.) Take extra care to record your productivity as objectively as possible, including the total number of hours worked. (Check out Dave Seah’s Printable CEO series for an easy-to-use time tracker.)

It helps to briefly journal about your mood, too – were you crabby this morning because you were tired? In the rush to get up and get going, did you have to leave your hair unwashed? (Yuck!)

Now, for the second week, eliminate your alarm clock. Sleep when you’re sleepy, work when you’re not. Again, record your productivity and total hours slept, along with your mood.

When you compare your final results (and I’d love to hear about them, too!), remember: it’s about quantity and quality together. I would rather work two hours less a week than spend two hours a day “working” but zoned out and pissed off.

Why You Should Still Wake Up Early… Sometimes

I’ve kept “wake up before 6am for 30 consecutive days” as one of my 101 goals in 1,001 days, but now it’s there for a different reason.

Before, I wanted to join the great cult of productivity leaders who accomplish more before 6am than others do all day. Now, I want to do it only because it’s hard and it requires a high level of self-discipline.

In other words, I want to prove I can, and say I did it.

But I’ll have to wait until I can afford to let my productivity suffer.

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It seems like everywhere I turn lately, I hear people start a sentence with “I need X,” with X invariably being something that they do not in fact need at all – they simply want it.

The tragedy of this situation is that by assigning all of these trivial non-needs (hereafter referred to as “needs”) the importance of a genuine need, we lose the ability to focus on what’s most critical in order to propel us to what we really want.

A common example:

You really want to devote your life to pursuing your passion and derive a comfortable income from doing so. Making this change would require having at least three months’ income set aside.

However, you are living paycheck-to-paycheck in a 9-5 that you don’t like, you have a girlfriend who demands you spend your every free moment with her, and you live in a spacious apartment with nice furniture and a big-screen television in a nice neighborhood where you drive to the grocery store and the drive-thru burger joint almost everyday.

Each day, you express—and indulge—many “needs” throughout the day. You “need” to drive to work. You “need” a coffee at Starbucks. You “need” a newspaper. You “need” a Mountain Dew from the soda machine at work. You “need” to go out for lunch. You “need” to catch the season premiere of Lost tonight with your girl, a couple beers, and take-out Chinese.

Now you need to ask yourself what’s more important:

Being able to wake up each morning and indulge your greatest passion, free of the stress of overdue bills and a temperamental supervisor, or:

• Coffee at Starbucks (instead of brewing it at home, or making tea, or drinking water)?
• Driving to work (instead of taking the bus, or biking, or walking, or car-pooling)?
• Watching TV?
• Eating fast food (instead of eating inexpensive foods at home)?
• Lounging at home with your significant other (instead of working overtime, or a part-time job, or freelance work)?

Don’t confuse convention with need, either. If you’re truly passionate about your goals, you’ll suddenly see that you don’t need a car at all—you can bike, or walk, or run, or bus, or FlexCar around town.

The best part is, by cutting your expenses to the minimum, you’ll be able to live for that much longer on that much less money. If you initially need three months’ expenses set aside in order to take a stab at that new business, and your monthly expenses are cut in half, then you’ll only need one half of your original estimate.

Remember—these short-term sacrifices won’t last forever. Once you’ve put aside the resources you need to take the leap into doing what you really want, you will once again have the resources to splurge on dinners out and a nicer apartment—if those things are even important to you anymore.

Now, I am not advocating living off nothing but ramen and living in a tent in the park. Life just wouldn’t be enjoyable if we only tended our true animalistic needs and ignored all the rest. But there’s a difference between going through life unaware of indulging our wants and CHOOSING which to indulge and which to ignore in pursuit of a higher purpose.

However, when we sacrifice that which we want most for that which we want right this minute, we sacrifice the greatest enjoyment life has to offer for nothing but short-lived satiation.

As you go about your day, stop yourself and ask:

Do I really need to buy or do this? What alternatives do I have?

I challenge you to identify and eliminate five “needs” from your life this week! I’d love to hear what you chose and why, and what greater goal(s) you’re thismuchcloser to achieving as a result!

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Many advocates of getting organized suggest starting small. Pick one room, change one thing, start (or eliminate) one habit.

That’s crap.

I don’t write this blog to coddle you. Baby steps is nothing more than procrastination in disguise.

Now, before you leave in a huff, let me qualify.

Deciding to overhaul your entire life for the better — starting now — doesn’t mean executing this commitment flawlessly everyday. You’ll fail. You’ll have setbacks.

And that’s okay.

It is far superior to cheat on your diet two days a week than to never change your eating plan at all, which is — let’s be honest — really failing seven days a week.

Failure doesn’t last forever. If you succeed five days out of seven, soon you’ll find those small successes snowballing into a success streak, and you may “cheat” only once a month, or not at all.

The only true failure is never trying at all.

So break out the pen and paper and start listing your goals. All of them. Now post that list everywhere — your computer desktop, the front door, the bathroom mirror, the back of your hand. Commit to seeing them all through — starting now.

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You’ve got a new goal. (Or maybe 101 new goals!) This time, you’re really going to do it, too … only you’re going to start tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or the day after that.

The simple answer to this dilemma is to simply start now, as in right this minute.

However, I strongly believe in getting off on the right foot, and sometimes starting on a “special” day can be the difference between actually getting going and waiting for yet another tomorrow that never comes.

Great Dates for change include:

• Sundays
• The first day of the month
• The first day of a new season
• Holidays
• New Year’s Eve

Of course, personal milestones – birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, deaths, births, moves – are also excellent times for positive personal change.

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If you put the same amount of the same ingredients in a pan and cook them for the same length of time at the same temperature each and every time, you will end up with the same cake, each and every time.

After eating it day in and day out, even the most moist and delicious of cakes will rapidly lose its flavor. If the outcome of your recipe isn’t a moist and delicious cake, but rather broiled brussels sprouts, life will start to get pretty bleak, pretty quickly.

What’s a person to do?

Buy new ingredients.

Your life is, after all, a compilation of what you put into it, and if you’re running on auto-pilot, you may as well be eating those brussels sprouts.

Today, I encourage you to change up your ingredients.

Start small:

The next time you want coffee, ask the barista to surprise you with her favorite drink.

Stop by the bookstore and pick up a book you’ve never heard of from a section you rarely frequent.

Drive home without taking the highway, and listen to a radio station you’ve never played before.

Eat cereal out of a coffee mug. With chopsticks.

Or, if that stuff sounds old hat, be more adventurous:

Call in sick — right now — and drive until your fuel light comes on. Stop and photograph five things that start with the letter H.

Open the dictionary to a random word. Determine which numbers on a telephone keypad correspond to the first five letters. Make plans to visit that zip code.

Drive until you get tired. Move there. (This is actually how I first found myself in Portland.)

The point is, change something. Change your hair, change the layout of your living room, change the order you go down the aisles at the grocery store. You never know what a little change might turn into.

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UPDATE: The 101 Goals series has inspired its own site! Please visit 101 Goals in 1,001 Days for even more planning advice and downloadable execution plans.

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