photo by cocoparisienne

In the early 1990s, a young comic named Brad Isaac ran into Jerry Seinfeld at a comedy club.

Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Isaac asked Seinfeld what advice he’d give to someone just starting out in the business. Seinfeld’s reply outlined one of the most effective productivity strategies in existence. As a writer, I use it to make this blog happen twice a week. As a musician, I’ve used it to practice trumpet for the last 450 days in a row, a streak I never approached while in music school or while working as a freelance musician.

photo by Pexels When I first discovered the world of productivity in 2011, I was a frazzled graduate student and freelance musician. I thought I was crazy busy, but looking back, I really wasn’t. I had relatively few commitments, but I was so disorganized that it took everything I could muster just to keep my head above water.

Fed up with mediocrity, I picked up a copy of Getting Things Done and read it cover to cover. Adopting David Allen’s simple principles, I became addicted to productivity (and a little obsessed, truthfully).

A rich life involves learning new skills, slowly mastering difficult things, and sharing our work. Deep down, we all want to contribute.

But once we find even modest success, many of us struggle with a feeling that we’re secretly frauds, that we’ve somehow managed to fool everyone, and that the charade could end at any moment.

There’s a name for this nagging doubt: imposter syndrome (or imposter phenomenon, as it was first named by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in a 1978 paper).

If you are in a job, and if you get one big thing done in a year, you’ve had a hell of a good year.

— Tom Peters

Do you have time to write a book?

Here are two answers to this question, both true:

1. No way.
2. Sure!

In one sense, no one who works 40 hours a week has time to write a book. In another sense, everyone does.

Fair warning: this post is about getting pooped on by a baby. If you’re eating right now, maybe revisit this post later.

Okay, so I was finishing a post about time management, but then the below happened, and I had no choice but to scrap my kinda boring time management post and write about this instead.

As I type this, I’m en route to St. Louis with Sarah, Baby Kate, and our fearless hound Loki.