I had a big “click” last night.
I’m doing a few things very differently starting today.
- I’m writing daily blog posts—not because I want to build an audience, or be heard. Nothing like that. Instead, I’m retraining my brain to ship. Daily. I’m getting reps under my belt to hard-wire my brain to ship.
- I’m prioritizing my to-dos by what I call “Purpose Metrics.”
- I’m time blocking again. I used to do this religiously in my first business, and it worked wonders for my productivity.
- I’m disabling all non-urgent notifications during productive hours.
- I’m in dark mode everything.
This comes from Seth Godin’s recent Akimbo episode, titled something like “Why TV Sucks.” In the Q&A, he answers a listener’s question about what it means to really ship, and then reminds us of an incredibly valuable point: when we’re afraid to ship, it’s because we’re afraid to be judged; afraid of whether we’re good or not. But the only way to truly know this, and to improve on whatever answer we get, is to ship. Put our work out there.
So here’s mine starting today. It will train me to ship because it’s time to ship, not because something is ready. I’ll never sacrifice quality, but I will always ship when it’s time. And I’ll get better feedback on my work—and my work will improve—because of it. Plus, I love writing. 😀
Up until now, my system has been to prioritize to-dos by a subjective p1, p2, p3 methodology. But I haven’t been satisfied with it.
Starting last night, I’m blocking sections of my day for specific high-return activities, and doing only that activity during that time—except in emergencies of course.
I installed inMotion.app which is the best “distraction blocker” tool I’ve used to date. Jonathan Lefèvre explains why it’s much better than others. My main reason is that it’s built for people like me, who still need to use social media messaging for work:
I’ve been absolutely hijacked by notifications and conversations of all kinds—from team communication in Slack, to prospecting on LinkedIn, to supporting Crash users on live chat, to trying desperately to keep up with emails to multiple addresses.
If you want to get in touch with me urgently, you can @ me in Slack or call me. Otherwise I will get back to you when I’m budgeting time for communication—not when the messages arrive.
My eyes have suffered tremendously over the past 10+ years doing computer work. I get Computer Vision Syndrome / Digital Motion Sickness much faster these days, and I have to be extremely intentional with my growingly limited tolerance for screens.
Dark mode helps this a lot—especially at night, but also during the day. As I type this in Notion, I ⌘+SHIFT+L to quick-switch to Light Mode, and I’m practically blinded. 😵
Luckily macOS makes it super simple to select Dark Mode from the General settings. And for Web browser, I found an awesome extension called Dark Reader that does an excellent job converting 95% of Web elements to a pleasant Dark Mode. Some things are still a bit wonky, but it’s 95% better than before.
That’s it! It’s 10:45 and I am switching gears to get to Inbox Zero for the morning.
Thanks for reading,
jeremy.chevallier.net
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