For example if somebody uses liquid tape & feels like most people waste a lot of money on tape

For me, productivity is the name of the game. My daily goal is to spend as much time as possible either prospecting, closing or delighting clients and less time doing admin tasks.

Being a one person demolition team, I try to streamline as much as possible with tools and automation, as well as using productivity best practices (batching, pomodoro, etc.). To date, this has worked well for me, to the point that I was able to handle a couple more clients without having to be stuck in front of a screen 24/7.

Currently, I'm looking for resources, methods, tools, or anything else that can positively optimize my one person operation.

Sales freelancers would love to hear your recommendations on this one.

Tools that make me more productive:

Collective - https://www.collective.com/

• Collective handles all my taxes, accounting, compliance, and more. All-in-one with great customer service. Saves me hours every week.

Superhuman - https://superhuman.com/

• Superhuman quickly became my go to for all things email.

Fastic - https://fastic.com/

• Intermittent fasting has added 1h-1h30m of free time to my day.

Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/

• Still testing it, but this is great for note taking or any type of internal documentation.

Aura - https://www.aura.com/

• My go-to for all things related to fraud prevention (Identity theft, credit card fraud, etc.)

My Favorite Business/Freelancer Podcasts:

• IndieHackers - https://www.indiehackers.com/podcasts
• This Week In Startups - https://thisweekinstartups.com/

Books That I'm Reading:

• Managing for results by Peter Drucker
• The ONE Thing by Jay Papasan
• What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack

TL;DR

• Use a habit tracking to get a bird’s eye view of your life. What gets measured gets managed;
• In the tracker switch from streaks of days to streaks of weeks. Do not put too much pressure on yourself and have at least one free day every week (for instance, set the goal to meditate 6 days a week rather than everyday);
• Create mini-challenges. E.g. having a streak of four weeks of going to gym three days a week. It might be psychologically easier to go after a 4 weeks challenge rather than a 1 year resolution;
• When you create a mini-challenge, have highly achievable weekly goal. Keep challenges short (3-5 weeks seem to be optimal). This makes goals feel achievable and helps avoid falling off the wagon;
• I made an app that helps keep my mini-challenges organised (see the screenshot). You can find the app here:
  • Play Store (android)
  • App Store (iOS)
• Feel free to send any bug reports and/or feature requests directly to me via reddit messages;
• Today is the first Monday of the new year so there’s no better time to test if this strategy will work for you.

In “Atomic habits” James Clear advises to start new habits with making them obvious. One of the ways to accomplish this, he suggests, is to use a habit tracker. In the beginning of 2019 I was overwhelmed by the number of things I wanted to achieve so I decided to give it a try and started tracking my habits. One of the benefits I saw immediately is how the tracker made me feel more in control of my life. I didn’t have to guess any more how well particular habit/goal was executed; it was all in front of me. The tracker gave me a bird’s-eye view of my life and highlighted what things i need to pay attention to on a particular day/week.

The most motivating part of tracking for me is building streaks. The more days I have in a streak, the easier it becomes to keep up with a habit. There was one problem with streaks though: there are a lot of activities in life that I have no intention of doing every day. For instance, my workout goal is to show up in gym 3 times a week rather than everyday. To cope with this problem I switched from streaks of days to streaks of weeks. Any week where I did 3 or more workouts was co

I'm trying to use the Feynman technique, but I think I'm not implementing it as well as I should. Just want to know what other techniques are out there.

Last year, one of my parents died and I graduated college without a job. After a few months of doing nothing, I implemented the advice in Atomic Habits, and I've been staying on track - I'm on Day 187 of learning Japanese, Day 134 of learning guitar, and Day 142 of exercising. I'm proud of my progress, and these habits give my day structure.

But how does one "graduate" a habit to a full workday? In my case, I am unemployed and trying to become a full-time illustrator, so I should be trying to improve my skills and putting together a portfolio, but this question also applies to more generally to being unemployed and self-studying, or otherwise in an unstructured environment.

In the beginning, I told myself that, since art would be my "career," I should be drawing as much as possible and putting all my free time into it. I set quotas for myself and gave myself assignments to complete by certain deadlines. This didn't work - according to my timetable, I averaged about 1 hour per day and had many days where I didn't do art at all because of dreading the associated negative emotion of constantly feeling behind schedule.

So, in line with the Atomic Habits method, I decided to start slow and treat it as just another "habit" on my tracker, and became much more consistent - today is Day 81 of my "Art" habit. By telling myself I just had to clock in 5 minutes a day, I've been averaging 2 hours a day this year.

It's a great improvement, but... 2 hours a day is reasonable for someone who is already working another full-time job. But I'm sitting here at home, unemployed, parent paying rent, and can only get 2 hours out a day. At this rate it will take me half a decade to reach the skill level needed to enter the industry, especially since my decision to become an artist was a relatively recent pivot.

Even the most chill, work-life-balance-loving professional artists say they aim for at least 4 hours a day - let alone the toxic artists who talk about 12-hour workdays. On principle, I dislike focusing too much on the number of hours; but the reality is that every working adult is expected to clock in 8 hours a day and I'm only hitting a quarter of that.

I think my mental health is relatively fine, too; it's been nearly a year since my parent's death and though I've been sad, I think it's just natural grief that I am recovering from. Maybe some mild depression at worst, but I don't have a history of mental health issues and have been consistent with taking care of m

I have installed Habitica, Session, and MyFitnessPal to ensure that everyday I spend is spent doing something productive. But I still feel like I lack impact. I workout, read, code, sell cookies, make music all in the same day. Should I split up the coding and the music making for different days? Because it seems like I can’t do both effectively in the same day.

Right now US, and in lesser extent other western countries, cultural and social complexes are centred around “identity”. Knowing to what group you belong and what name you give to that group is very important for your personal identity. Delineations of Identity are thus very important, and things like racial categories and gender categories become very important to define and identify with.

I understand how making a new gender can benefit the people who don’t feel like the other genders there are. But to me, this only makes sense in a cultural complex where identity groups are very important.

In this cishet society it makes sense to create another gender if you don’t feel at home.

But in the bigger picture, why the emphasis on gender? Shouldnt the better course of action be to let biological sex be biological sex. And then to let everyone be their unique person without having to give who you are a name? Why make your gender identity so important to who you are?

For context: I live in a country where American identity and gender ideas are gaining ground. I think there are things to gain from cultural exchange with the US, but it feels like the “American” focus on gender(eg everyone putting pronouns in your bio, creating a new gender whenever you don’t feel any existing ones represent you) goes too far beyond “accepting differences” and perpetuates the culture of identity

Many people have taken quite a hit to their productivity since they have been forced to work from home. At the office, being productive is easy because you're in an environment where you're being held accountable to your actions. But at home, that pressure isn't there.

So how do you stay productive while working from home?

I'd like to share with you 6 things that you can do starting tonight that will make it so that you get way more things done during your days. These are things that I do myself to keep myself on track. Note that this will be a long read, but you can also watch it on YouTube as well if you prefer (and subscribe to make this your best year yet).

1. A Productive Day Starts at Night

If I tell you to have a productive day, what does that even mean?

Before you can have a productive day, you need to define what a productive day means to you. So before you go to bed tomorrow, make a list with 3 things (or more) that you need to have done the next day in order to be able to call it a productive day.

They don't necessarily need to be related to your job, but rather things that are important to you as a person. If you want to be your best self, you need to work on yourself, it won't happen automagically. So make that list and focus on getting those things done during your days.

Also, it should go without saying that you need to go to bed early enough to get 8 hours of sleep. That's non-negotiable if you want to be productive.

2. Know What Moves the Needle

Being busy =/= being productive.

Everyone likes to "be busy", but the problem is that people are doing things for the sake of doing things. However, I can assure you that there are tasks that take up a lot of your time, but that don't contribute much to your goals. You can tell yourself that you're busy, but the truth is you're pretty much wasting your time!

You need to look at your goals and then figure out what the few tasks are that will get you moving towards those goals the best. You need to find your high-impact activities and focus on those throughout your days rather than the trivial stuff that doesn't move the needle.

3. Keep Track of Your Time Wasters

How are you wasting your time right now?

If you cannot give me an answer to that question within a few seconds, you have a pretty big problem. Repeat after me: "If I don't know what the problem is, I cannot solve it." And that goes for your distractions and time wasters as well.

You may kn

Bonus: non-49er RB

Of course, everyone has a different definition of what it means to be productive. For me, it’s being able to put 100% of my attention and awareness into whatever I’m doing (whether it’s work, hanging out with friends, watching a movie, or playing a sport).

Before I started meditating, I’d take a break from one activity by doing another. But the truth is all activities require a certain level of awareness to participate in, even the ones we do for fun.

I was never giving the attention and awareness part of my brain a rest. So even though I went from work to watching a movie, I would never really pay attention to the movie and would just be cycling through distractions on my phone. And somehow still feel mentally drained afterwards.

Now that I meditate and sit still for 10-20min daily, it resets my brain so that I can be fully present in whatever I’m doing.