The science-backed method that helps solopreneurs start (and finish) their hardest tasks

They say it takes about 20 minutes to refocus every time you switch tasks.I don’t know about you, but I don’t have 20 minutes to waste every time I switch between the tasks on my list. My time is limited. So I created a way to skip that 20 minute hazy moment where you’re faffing around…

The life-changing method I created to manage work that was waiting on me, get back to people faster, and create more space to do my best work.

My foolproof weekly planning routine that takes me about 10 minutes every week and keeps me organised across my work, my creator business & my whole life.

Lately I’ve been struggling with my process for getting big creative projects done. They feel like they are taking forever to finish. Each step feels big so I put it off thinking I need a bigger chunk of time to deal with it.

I am a master procrastinator. Not because I don't know what I should do or because I'm not motivated - but because most of the time I just don't have the headspace to get stuff done.

I was listening to an Instagram reel the other day from Sahil Bloom talking about finite v infinite games. If you're not familiar with the concept...

Yesterday I searched Google for the phrase 'How To Stop'I couldn't exactly articulate what I was trying to find, but basically, I wanted some advice on what it looks like to slow down, stop, & rest. I assumed I'd find some advice on this exact thing. Except I didn't.

I love this time between Christmas and New Year. It's always so full of hope. It's quiet and gives me time to think, plan & dream for the new year. And like everyone I'm thinking about goals I want to accomplish, creating concrete plans of reaching those goals.

Daily planners are not a new thing. It's literally the simplest & most powerful way to plan the day. Take a sheet of paper (or screen), put the date at the top & start organising your day. I remember getting my first Filofax and then going on to design my first paper (then digital) planner pages.

Despite what it looks like, I'm not one for complicated systems.And while I admire all the people who can put their head down for days and go through long yearly reviews & planning rituals, that is not for me.

Unpopular Opinion: Procrastination has nothing to do with your motivation (or discipline) levels. I constantly defer tasks on my list to tomorrow. So much so that I created a list in my daily planner called 'All The Thing I'm Putting Off Till Tomorrow.' At first, it was a joke, but it's become a key way of noticing patterns in my behaviour.

Why do we subject ourselves to so many unwritten rules as creators and writers? One of these unwritten rules I decided to ditch was: If I didn't write it last week I MUST write it this week.

For the past 2 years I have had one morning routine: Wake Up Make Coffee & Write. It doesn’t matter if it’s a weekday or weekend, I'm on holiday, in the middle of a busy time at work, or whatever - I do the same thing each morning.

When I'm not creating content for the internet I'm a marketing coach.It took me a long time to embrace the role of coach in my life. When I first got started I thought I was supposed to have all the answers and that was why my clients were coming to me.

At the beginning of each year I choose a word to theme my year. It's a word that focuses me and provides a lens to make decisions, take action & frame everything I do. It's less of a goal or a 'thing to do' and more of an intention that infuses my thoughts, my actions, my goals & my days.

Most people stop learning when they finish school or university. School gives structure to our learning for the first years of our life. But when we finish school, unless we continue to be intentional about learning & growth, we end up wandering through life, maybe reading a few books (if we're lucky).

Be honest, how many of your tweet bookmarks do you go back and look at?Judging from the tweets I've seen in the last few days the answer is... very little. This is a no judgement zone here! I had hundreds of bookmarked tweets racked up that I never ever looked at.

When I first started using Roam Research I didn't get. I had come from a very rigid system that required a lot of processing and maintenance. And suddenly I was staring at a blank page wondering how on earth is this going to be better at organising my brain?

I currently have over 600 notes in my writing inbox. It's not because I neglect to process them (it's the first thing I do every day). It's because my outcome is not about getting to zero. Just like the number of pages left at the bottom of my kindle books I wish I could simply turn off the constant nagging that I'm trying to get to the end of everything.

Should you really capture everything that comes into your head? We’ve come to take it as gospel that our knowledge management system or our ‘second brain’ should act like our first brain - only better. Our first brain for some odd reason can’t hold a lot of stuff that this modern world throws at us.

I had someone ask me recently how I managed to move all my 10 years worth of notes from Evernote into my new system in Notion & then into Roam Research. The truth is, I didn't. I literally abandoned everything in Evernote and started again.

I don't review my notes in the typical way most PKM gurus will tell you to do. Most people treat their notes like a filing cabinet. Writing them and then filing them away for some later use. But who wants to drag files out of a filing cabinet every week to add to the 'review' pile? How boring (and no wonder people fail when it comes to 'reviewing' their notes).

Traditional wisdom tells us we should have a lead magnet to 'trick' people into signing up for our newsletter because no one just signs up for newsletters anymore right? WRONG. Every day, no less than 5 people sign up for my newsletter without having to be coerced or 'tricked' by a lead magnet.

In 2 years I've grown from 0-18k here on Twitter and people are always asking me what the secret key or tactic or hack to unlock growth is.

The biggest creators I know have started on one platform and then as they grew they branched out onto multiple platforms. Because being a creator on a platform isn’t just about the content, it’s about understanding the platform, engaging with people and a million other different factors.

Social media can make us crazy as creators or writers. On the one hand, it's the perfect conduit to get our message out there and build an audience. On the other hand, we're constantly wrestling with algorithms, and the shortest shelf life for all of our content.

Twitter Impressions are down. That seems to be the only thing I hear from creators at the moment. And yeah, it sucks. But it's not the first time they've gone through a dip, and it won't be the last.

Content alone isn't going grow your audience on content platforms. As creators, our main 'thing' is creating content, so it's easy to see social media platforms as just big distribution channels to get more people to see what we are creating. But if the internet is just one big distribution channel for your voice you are missing the point.

It's the (new) age old question - Should you publish on Medium or your own blog? Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple people ask me why I chose Medium over my own blog or substack or the many other platforms I could write longer-form content on.

Just over a year ago I got started writing on Twitter. I always viewed Twitter as a distribution platform. A place where you came to tell the world things you created. But these days Twitter has become my main publishing platform where I test ideas and get (mostly) instant feedback on them.

1000 people. 30k essays. 7 million words.When I first heard that we had 1000 people in the January cohort of ship30for30 I thought I might have to quit my day job after all 🤣

The creator economy is both wild and lonely at the same time. On one hand, I feel so lucky to be living in this moment where there are so many opportunities for creators. And on the other hand, it's an extremely lonely place that's easy to quit

It's easy to get caught up in numbers on Twitter. There is literally numbers everywhere. Number of followers, number of likes, engagement rate numbers, numbers of notifications. It's enough to make you think that Twitter is all about numbers...

In 2021 I became a legit creator. Generating over 12k in revenue from digital products. Here’s how it played out step by step. I have played around on the internet for over 10 years. Always wanting to create something of significance, never quite hitting the mark. Never staying at it long enough to see any significant growth.

The internet has absolutely ruined us for real life. We are constantly bombarded with messages about scale. Build a SAAS company that can infinitely scale, create digital products that you build once & sell twice, free up your time and automate every process you can.

⚡️NEWS FLASH: You don't have to be using Notion as your main daily productivity driver to build cool products with it and make money online as a creator. Here are 17 product ideas that you could build & launch in the next week using Notion.

The beauty of the creator economy is that there are so many ways you can make money. And you don't have to create your own 20+ module CBC transformational online course to do it. And you probably shouldn't (at first). A course is a big endeavor, it takes a lot of time and energy to build and there is no guarantee that anyone will buy it.

I believe if you are creating & publishing online everyday, then you can build and sell a product. I've been writing online for the past 80 days. Not about one specific thing, but about a lot of little things. I've built an audience over that time. I've built credibility as a creator. And I've followed the signals to create products that my audience wants.

I live in a beautiful place called Sydney, Australia. It's amazing. But it's far away from where lots of the action happens... especially in Cohort Based Courses (CBC's). As an Aussie, I immediately have to make a decision when I see a new CBC. Not about money or value. I either have to choose to miss out on a big part of the live experience of the course. Or I have to forgo my sleep and jump on zoom calls at ridiculous times of the night usually between 1am & 3 am.

This time last year the Australian government announced that every single one of my clients would have to close the doors to their business... in less than 24 hours. I coach Gym & Fitness Studio Owners. I remember sitting in our office and thinking - WTF!?!

Good intentions don’t work. Mechanisms do... Jeff Bezos. I was sitting in a workshop two weeks ago where I challenged my clients to a challenge to show up on social media for 100 days. It was a Friday, the challenge was set to start Monday. Some decided to start straight away. Admirable, but foolish. Their motivation died over the weekend and they had to start at 0 by Monday.

Why are habits so hard to stick to? I think because on a daily level they seem to make such an insignificant difference. It's often hard to see the change that those habits are making when we are caught up in the daily minutia. So how do we stay motivated to keep doing habits without seeing results every day?

I'm learning that going to my edge is where I experience the most aliveness in life. The problem is that too often I revert back to my comfort zone all cozy-like and forget that the edge is where aliveness is. The past few weeks Sydney has been in full lockdown. It's also the middle of winter. So, I decided to go into hibernation in my cozy little apartment. Eat, sleep, drink (& write essays of course).

Would you rather 10x growth or consistent daily growth? The Internet is a wild place where one day you are minding your own business and the next you are exploding because someone retweeted you or shared your product or wrote something about your company. But we have to remind ourselves that those moments are the exception and not the rule.

I spent some time chatting to my good friend from Ship30 Ely about note taking, my Notion system and being a better human.

Who are you becoming? A few days ago I wrote an essay about how I don't 'do goals' instead I live in the daily and I let each day be a fresh start to becoming the person I want to be. It was a little throw-away line at the end of an essay. Until Joe Lurie asked me the ultimate question.

Is it about time you started showing up for your future self? I find it really easy to show up for other people. If somebody needs me I'll drop everything to help. Often at the expense of myself. But what if I showed up for my future self? That girl who's me tomorrow or this afternoon? What if I started to ask myself how I could make her life easier, to make her life flow more smoothly, to help her to reach her goals?

What if we're thinking of habits all wrong? A couple of days ago Jackson Steger wrote an essay that I really can't stop thinking about. About values based habits and goals. Rather than building habits based on external outcomes we built them on our internal values instead?

Being consistent in one thing leads to consistency in all things. Seeing over 60 atomic essays on my calendar is cool and all. But it's meant something more powerful than just words on a page. It's proved to me that I AM a consistent person. And every day I write, I prove it to myself again. You see consistency isn't just about willpower. It's the belief that you can do it.

I'm an Introvert. Yeah yeah. I can tell you're shocked. Most people are when I tell them. Because people assume that I'm an extrovert because they see me 'out there' online or chatting comfortably at an event, or hosting Twitter spaces or doing a thousand other things. Basically they don't see me acting 'shy' so think I must be an extrovert.

If there is one thing that has derailed me on many a 30-day experiment, it's submitting to the voice in my head. You know THAT voice. You've probably experienced it too. You're trying to build a habit. You start off so well, you might even get a week in, and when you're not seeing the results you thought you would... BAM doubt starts to creep in.

Every experiment starts with a hypothesis. It's one of the only things I learned from year 7 science. No one is performing experiments just for the fun of it. OK, we may or may not have had some fun with the bunsen burners... but I digress.