Blog

Resources For Modern Workers

New content weekly to help you build your personal digital systems for productivity, self-improvement, knowledge, creativity & team work.

Browse By The Personal Systems You Want To Build...

The High School Highlighting Habit That Is Holding You Back and How to Fix It

Most of us learned how to study books & highlight in high school. And we're still doing it the same way.
Read post

How to Generate Better Ideas by Trying Less

The fastest way to solve an idea is to leave it unfinished.
Read post

Your Ultimate Guide to Time Blocking in Tana | Step By Step Tutorial

3 easy timeblocking approaches to fit any work style using Tana.
Read post

Ditch Brainstorming: Here’s How to Build an Endless Idea Ecosystem Instead

Why You'll Never Run Out of Ideas Again Once You Set Up This System
Read post

Why Your Notes Aren’t Working for You (And the One Shift You Need to Make)

Traditional note-taking methods mostly feel like information storage. You spend so much time organising, categorising, and filing rather than the real work of exploring & working with ideas.
Read post

How to Use AI to Kickstart Your Writing—Without Getting Generic Content

How to Turn a Messy Brain Dump Into an Outline Using AI in 10 Minutes (and while chilling on the couch)
Read post

Supercharge Your Tana Day Page with Related Content - 10 Must-Have Sections

I've always loved how Tana keeps everything at my fingertips. But with the new Related Content feature, it's like having a supercharged dashboard right on my day page!
Read post

Create Your Ultimate Digital Bullet Journal with Tana: Step-by-Step Guide

I have always loved the Bullet Journal system. It's simple & yet a profound way to get things out of your head and stay focused throughout the day.
Read post

How To Create New Ideas From Old Content With A Simple GPT Prompt called 'Pretend Podcast'

Breath fresh life into old content with a simple chatGPT prompt that will get you thinking in ways you never thought of before
Read post

4 Simple Strategies to Finally Review Your Notes Consistently

How to Turn Reviewing Your Notes into a Habit You Actually Enjoy
Read post
View All →

The 5 Apps That Drive My Daily Work & Life

I've been known to scroll through the apps store at 2:30am searching for the perfect app. Here are 5 I use everyday. Notion. My daily driver where I run my life from. More than a note-taking app, it's where I get work done. From task lists to journaling to running my whole website - not a day goes by without it.
Read post
View All →

The High School Highlighting Habit That Is Holding You Back and How to Fix It

Most of us learned how to study books & highlight in high school. And we're still doing it the same way.
Read post

How to Generate Better Ideas by Trying Less

The fastest way to solve an idea is to leave it unfinished.
Read post

Ditch Brainstorming: Here’s How to Build an Endless Idea Ecosystem Instead

Why You'll Never Run Out of Ideas Again Once You Set Up This System
Read post

Why Your Notes Aren’t Working for You (And the One Shift You Need to Make)

Traditional note-taking methods mostly feel like information storage. You spend so much time organising, categorising, and filing rather than the real work of exploring & working with ideas.
Read post

4 Simple Strategies to Finally Review Your Notes Consistently

How to Turn Reviewing Your Notes into a Habit You Actually Enjoy
Read post

How to Find and Share Ideas No One Else Is Talking About

Three beliefs held me back from getting started sharing my ideas online. (And the simple shift I made to overcome them) ↓
Read post

Talk It Out: 3 Effective Ways to Capture Ideas with Your Voice

Capturing ideas might be one of the most important practices we can develop as humans. But is writing or typing the only way to capture those ideas? Think again...
Read post

The Unexpected Way to Gain Deep Insights from Social Media

Social media gets a bad wrap these days. And for some good reasons. It's easy to get caught up with the doomscrolling, letting it distract us, getting into arguments we shouldn't, helping us procrastinate, not doing good things for our mental health. And yet. It's still my biggest category of saved items in my knowledge library & serves me up a wealth of new ideas every single day.
Read post

3 Weird Things I Do to Stay Inspired Every Day

One weird habit has kept me consistently writing for the past four years.Before I was known as Ev Chapman, Prolific Creator. I was Ev Chapman, Wannabe creator.
Read post

4 Simple Steps to Make Your Notes More Useful In Real Life Projects

What if you didn't have to start each project with a blank page?
Read post
View All →

Your Ultimate Guide to Time Blocking in Tana | Step By Step Tutorial

3 easy timeblocking approaches to fit any work style using Tana.
Read post

Supercharge Your Tana Day Page with Related Content - 10 Must-Have Sections

I've always loved how Tana keeps everything at my fingertips. But with the new Related Content feature, it's like having a supercharged dashboard right on my day page!
Read post

Create Your Ultimate Digital Bullet Journal with Tana: Step-by-Step Guide

I have always loved the Bullet Journal system. It's simple & yet a profound way to get things out of your head and stay focused throughout the day.
Read post

Unlock the Power of Tana's New AI Chat: A Step-by-Step Guide

Can AI really make your note-taking more powerful?
Read post

Simplifying My Day Page With Tana's New Core Features: Full Walkthrough

How I'm using my Daily Page now with the release of Tana's Core features like Related Content & Google Calendar integration.
Read post

Unlock the Power of Hybrid Note-Taking: Integrating GoodNotes with Tana

I very rarely miss my paper notebooks now that I use Tana. But every now and then when my brain needs to arrange my thoughts visually & find myself longing for a simple workflow where I can go from notes → drawing → back to my notes.
Read post

My Set & Forget Tana Weekly Review System

Confession: I've never been very good at a consistent weekly review habit.
Read post

My Tana 5 Minute Daily Planning Routine (Inspired by Sunsama)

I am notorious for creating day plans that are unrealistic and have WAY too much packed into them. Which is why when I saw Sunsama's daily planning routine it really got my attention
Read post

I Replaced A Full Time Admin Assistant With AI

How I Use Tana To Get Admin Jobs Done Faster & More Efficiently Than A Human Asisstant
Read post

How To Use Tana's Random Node Feature: 5 Ways

In this video I show you 5 ways you can use Tana's Random Node Field to review past notes, mix up your journalling practice, and have a little fun.
Read post

Easy Mode Unlocked: The Ultimate Tana Starter Guide

Tana is one of the most powerful knowledge management tools I have used. But sometimes all those powerful features can overshadow just how simple it can be to get started. And I guarantee that most people are overthinking it from the very start.
Read post

Create A Custom Affirmations App In Tana: Step By Step Tutorial

Throw away your Affirmations apps & subscriptions and build your very own custom one in Tana
Read post
View All →

How to Use AI to Kickstart Your Writing—Without Getting Generic Content

4 min 32
How to Turn a Messy Brain Dump Into an Outline Using AI in 10 Minutes (and while chilling on the couch)
Read post

How To Create New Ideas From Old Content With A Simple GPT Prompt called 'Pretend Podcast'

4 mins 8
Breath fresh life into old content with a simple chatGPT prompt that will get you thinking in ways you never thought of before
Read post

How to Turn Your 1:1 Calls into a Goldmine of Content: Step By Step Guide

2 min 37
What if every time you jumped on a call with a client you could generate a bunch of content ideas at the same time?
Read post

Turn Your Morning into a Creative Powerhouse with This Simple 3 Step Writing Routine

3 min 39
How I Went from Sporadic Blogging to Consistent Content Creation with One Simple Routine
Read post

The Quirky Method I Use to Mine My Newsletter for Social Media Content

2 min 39
Ever feel like content creation is consuming your life? This method will save you.
Read post

3 Cheat Codes For Non Experts To Start Sharing Your Ideas Online

We live in a world where it has never been easier to share your ideas & build an audience (& a business) around your ideas.Think about how hard that would have been 100 years ago or even 50 years ago?So why then do we struggle so much to get started?
Read post

Less Creation, More Communication: Why Your Best Ideas Deserve a Replay

When I post about sharing ideas in multiple ways the most commented thing ends up being:'Only a portion of your audience sees every post, so sharing it multiple times means everyone sees it.'But that comment misses the whole point of WHY we should share our ideas repeatedly.
Read post

How To Build A Creative Practice Like The Great Artists

I struggled for a decade to be a creator without a creative practice Instead of practising daily, the only time I switched on my creativity was when I needed to produce something. No wonder I struggled for so long!
Read post

How To Build Atomic Ideas (That You Can Turn Into Endless Content)

Three years ago I was desperate to build a consistent writing practice.
Read post

How I Structure My Daily Writing Sessions To Unlock My Ideas

One daily habit pulled me out of years of inconsistency as a creator... Establishing a Daily Spark Writing Practice.
Read post

8 Of My Go-To Frameworks For Turning Ideas Into Content

Content is simply the communication of ideas.Lots of people have ideas, but if you can't communicate them well all those amazing ideas are going to get lost in translation.So communication is the real game of content creation.
Read post

How To Break Down Content Creation Into Easy To Manage Phases

If weekly content planning always feels like a big lift to you, try breaking down your planning into phases instead.
Read post
View All →

No. You Don't Need A Lead Magnet To Grow Your Newsletter

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.
Read post

Why You Might Be Struggling To Grow As A Creator

2 min read
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.
Read post

Why Every Creator Needs A Signature Platform

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.
Read post

Social Media Is Not Your Enemy

2 min read
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.
Read post

Why Are All The Creators Leaving Twitter?

2 min read
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.
Read post

Why New Creators Should Go Deep (not wide) On Platforms

2 min read
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.
Read post

Why It Took Me 18 Months To Start Writing On Medium

2 min read
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.
Read post

4 Ways New Creators Can Get Started Publishing On Twitter

2 min read
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.
Read post

The Quick Guide For Managing Twitter Without Having To Quit Your Day Job

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 🤣
Read post

Every Creator Needs A Community

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
Read post

The Only Growth Hack You Need To Grow On Twitter

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...
Read post
View All →

How I Made Over $12k in Gumroad Sales As A Part-Time Creator in 2021

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.
Read post

Why Creators Should Avoid Scale At All Costs To Make Their First $$ Online

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.
Read post

The Definitive Guide To Notion Products That Are Not Templates

⚡️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.
Read post

Thinking Of Building An Online Course? Don't... Try This First

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.
Read post

How To Turn Your Content Into A Digital Product And Make $$$

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.
Read post

Can Cohort-Based Courses Be Just As Powerful A-Synchronously?

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.
Read post

Why I'm Building A Portfolio Of Small Bets

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!?!
Read post
View All →

Why Today Is A Bad Day To Start That New Habit You're Excited About

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.
Read post

How do you stay on track with goals when you can't see progress?

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?
Read post

How This Comfort Zone Girl Found Her Edge And Came Alive

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).
Read post

Have We Been Fooled Into The 10x Growth Myth?

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.
Read post

Using Notion To Be A Better Human | The Weekly Productive Chat With Elymar Apao

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

If Practice Makes Perfect Then Practice Being Who You Want To Be.

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.
Read post

Do The Things You're Future Self Will Thank You For

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?
Read post

What If We Could Re-Program Our Brains To Make Habits Easy?

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?
Read post

Want To Be More Consistent? Just Play The Next Play

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.
Read post

Busting the #1 Introvert Myth (that even introverts believe)

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.
Read post

Why Do We Chase Quick Fixes When We Know They Don't Work?

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.
Read post

Every Experiment Starts With A Hypothesis. Even 30 Day Ones

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.
Read post

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPARK Newsletter

Join 1500+ professionals who get my FREE newsletter with systems, frameworks & strategies that help you turn your expertise into income.