What is margin? Margin is breathing room. It’s the opposite of overwhelm, overload, and overtime. Margin means having some cash in the bank at the end of the month. It means having time during your day to spend on the things that are most important. When we have this breathing room, it opens up a
Continue Reading ›Pre-S: This is the second of a 2-part introduction to Margin. You can read Part 1 here. For everything we’ve got related to Margin, check out this page. * * * Though they are related, Margin and Stress are not the same thing. A lack of margin can (and usually will) cause stress. Being overloaded
Continue Reading ›It’s the end of the day. I work downstairs, so for me, closing up the office is as simple as stepping away from my desk and walking up a flight of stairs. I’ve had this 30-second commute since 2011, which is when I quit my job to focus full-time on writing. Despite the complete autonomy
Continue Reading ›In addition to my own efforts to dial down and re-focus on doing the things which are most important and most enjoyable to me, I’ve come across a handful of other folks doing the same. Below are a few links and quotes I hope you find useful. CGP Grey, in his article “Dialing Down”: “I
Continue Reading ›If you have more ideas than time but more time than attention, the best way to keep the needle moving forward is to have smarter “defaults” for how your spend your time and energy. Here’s the how and the why…
Continue Reading ›As you may know, I’ve been working for myself from home for since 2011. And even still, I’m terrible at estimating how much time I need to spend on a particular task. At first, my bad time estimations would frustrate my wife. She’d ask me how long until I was done working and I’d think
Continue Reading ›How do you keep focused doing the things that matter even when they’re a grind? Reader Alan N. just recently asked me this question and it’s an excellent one. Most of the time, the things that matter are a grind. Why is that? It seems unfair that the most important work is often mundane and
Continue Reading ›How would you define a successful creative career? There are two important elements: creative freedom and financial stability. So let’s define success as having the ability to do creative work we’re proud of and to keep doing that work. Now, there is no recipe for this stuff. It’s different for each person and changes with
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