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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...

I Quit Productivity. Now I Get Far More Done Every Day

A quick browse through Quora & you quickly realise people are obsessed with productivity. We have become programmed to fill our days with as many tasks as we can. And we call it productivity. Wearing 'busy' around like a badge of honour. But what if true productivity was about doing less?
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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.
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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.
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How To Turn Your Ideas Into Essays With One Golden Rule

I have ONE GOLDEN RULE for capturing new ideas. I never capture an idea without doing a quick brain dump. Never. Like Never. Did I mention... Never
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What A Pile Of Laundy Taught Me About Finding Flow

I might be killing it with Atomic Essays, but that doesn't mean I've got my whole life together. For instance, In the last two weeks, I haven't done any washing, I've been to the gym a mere 3 times and my house is a chaotic mess. Sure I've had some big things happening, like launching my first paid product. But surely not everything needs to go to crap.
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Can A Pink Sheet Help Make Your Writing Better? Let's Find Out

The world is full of people who have ideas but can't articulate them. A few years ago, I sat in a seminar listening to one of my coaches. I was completely in awe of the way someone would ask him a question and he would always have the exact right metaphor or be able to draw the right model to illustrate his point.
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Can We Ban Mid-Morning Meetings Please?

This year I started timeblocking my days. Breaking my day up into hour-long chunks and scheduling tasks to do within that time. It all started so well. Then a meeting would get scheduled in the middle of my morning and I wouldn't be able to get into any kind of significant work, because all I felt was the meeting looming.
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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.
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Why The Advice To Read One Book A Time Is Terrible Advice.

Reading one book a time is hugely inefficient. I've always been an avid reader. My favorite place to hang out at school was in the library. But there was always one thing that bugged me about reading. The advice that you should only read one book at a time.
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I Have A Magical Playlist 🎶 To Instantly Get You In The Flow. No Really

I've been struggling to focus lately. I'm flitting from one tab to another, constantly checking my phone, jumping on Twitter every 5 minutes (reading all the amazing essays). But getting any kind of focused work done has been painful and fleeting. So, this afternoon I grabbed my headphones, headed for a sunny corner in a cafe, and switched on a rather magical playlist. Almost INSTANTLY I was transported into a state of calm, relaxed, flow.
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The Truth About Constraint & Why They Will Set You Free

Creativity thrives in constraints. As creatives and creators, we often balk at that idea. We want wide open space to be able to create and explore unlimited possibilities. But in reality, has your best work really been produced when you've had unlimited time and resources?
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So, you feel like an imposter do you?

45 days ago most of my tweets went unnoticed. It's amazing how quickly showing up daily compounds. Now the engagement on Twitter is literally crazy some days! And I'm running to keep up. I can't remember the last time a tweet had 0 engagement. But something else has happened beyond just likes and comments.
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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.
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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.
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How to Generate Better Ideas by Trying Less

The fastest way to solve an idea is to leave it unfinished.
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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
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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.
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4 Simple Strategies to Finally Review Your Notes Consistently

How to Turn Reviewing Your Notes into a Habit You Actually Enjoy
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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) ↓
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Your Ultimate Guide to Time Blocking in Tana | Step By Step Tutorial

3 easy timeblocking approaches to fit any work style using Tana.
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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!
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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.
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Unlock the Power of Tana's New AI Chat: A Step-by-Step Guide

Can AI really make your note-taking more powerful?
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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.
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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.
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My Set & Forget Tana Weekly Review System

Confession: I've never been very good at a consistent weekly review habit.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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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
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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?
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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!
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How To Build Atomic Ideas (That You Can Turn Into Endless Content)

Three years ago I was desperate to build a consistent writing practice.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 🤣
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!?!
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Forget Goals, Focus on Intentions: My Yearly Planning Rituals That Set The Direction For A Powerful Year.

I used to hate yearly planning. And I think it comes down to my relationship with goal setting. I’m not much of a goal setter. A year is a long time and I don’t like to be locked into heavy goals throughout the year.
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Stop Cruising Through Life On Auto-Pilot & Open Up To New Possibilities

Most of us go through our lives literally just running on a hamster wheel.We wake up, we do the same things, we drive the same way to work, or eat the same meals, and we put things back in the same place.
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Why You Probably Don't Need To Be More Consistent In 2023

Consistency. I bet it's on your list of 'want more of it' in 2023. After all, it's the holy grail of productivity & self-improvement. And yet most of us feel like we're failing at it most of the time. But what if locking yourself into a rigid view of consistency is actually hindering you rather than helping you?
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3 Lessons Strength Training Taught Me About Consistency

Strength training has taught me more about consistency than any other thing I've done in life (including growing as a creator). The other day my trainer programmed inverted rows (under a low bar and pulling/rowing up). Every time I've attempted them before I have had to do them in batches. So when she said 15 reps I yelled an expletive in my head.
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Want To Accelerate Your Results? Find Ways To Show Up Daily

When starting something new you should probably find a way to do it daily. For years I thought the way to become a creator was to write two blogs a week (or 2 podcasts or two vlogs). After all, that seemed like a reasonable amount of writing each week.
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Three Ways To Finally Do The Thing You've Been Putting Off

I almost signed up for an 8 week summer book writing bootcamp this morning on Instagram. I don't need another Bootcamp or mastermind or course to actually write my book. I have an outline, I have half the content for it already! But I thought maybe this is what I need to get this thing finished.
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You Don't Need Another Guru To Tell You How To Live Your Life

Reminder: You are under no obligation to play by anyone else's rules. Most of us don't remember a time before the noise of the internet (& Twitter) meant every time you scroll you see another influencer or person with a social media account telling you how you should be doing everything in your life.
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If You Didn't Track It, Did It Even Happen?

I am the queen of unused trackers. A few days ago I threw out a tweet declaring tracking bankruptcy. It came as I looked at my Daily Page and realised that the tracker I set up to track my mood daily that I thought would be interesting, I had used a total of 2 times out of 50.
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Chase More Of What Lights You Up Inside

I have a decent library of books that sits in and around my desk. I designed it that way. Literally, my desk is built into my bookshelf. Every book holds a significant moment or memory or reason for being on that shelf.
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How To Fall In Love With Consistency

Consistency is hard. But when you master it, it's addictive as hell. 2 months ago I started training again with a personal trainer after taking a break for about 6 months. Starting again was HARD. Especially because I know what strong feels like. But what seemed hard on that first day is now starting to feel easier (if you can call lifting weight easy!).
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How To Tell If You're Stressed & Why You Should Stop Ignoring It

I've been a little MIA this week. You might have noticed, maybe not? On Monday I landed myself in the hospital after having chest pains & thinking I was having a heart attack. Don't worry, I was cleared of any heart problems.
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Consistency Is Hard Dammit.

This is going to be an uncomfortable essay about consistency. I am going to put a caveat at the beginning to say I am NOT the queen of consistency. Most of the time I write about things I'm currently experiencing and thinking about. So take this as much as an essay I'm writing for myself as for anyone else.
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