A Journey Worth Discovering - Why Getting Lost Is Your Best Path Forward

When Lost In The Forest, Hug A Tree

Just Make Sure You Get Lost First

This blog is many things. In part storytelling and in part instructional. I've written in the past about how to write and publish Amazon Kindle books using basic strategies on using Amazon's Kindle publishing. It's easy to upload and publish, but there is a whole slew of other things I'd like to write about on this blog.

This is a post about finding your way by getting lost first. 

As a teen, I spent a lot of time outdoors and growing up in Southern California affords quick access to many places.  Any point on the map, from the ocean to the mountains and deserts are but a short drive. 

In a matter of hours, you can go hike the forest, swim in a pond beneath ice-cold waterfalls, pack up the car, drive to the beach and catch a sunset surf-sesh. 

With family, we explored amazing wilderness parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone, as well as all points between. 

Often with my friends and their family, I'd spend a good portion of my early teen years hiking the John Muir Trail, the Cascade Mountains, Mount Whitney, among many other places. 

There were so many memories and lessons learned along the way.  To a great part, I'm sure it's part of who I've become. 

But one particular adventure above all that really formed my belief in teamwork and self-discovery. 

At 5:00 am, a group of 20 of us, me, my friends and their dads set off for a weeklong hiking trip through the Sierra's.

The day before we each went over our pack list, divvied up the food, water purification tablets, cooking equipment, tents, anything we could carry and need, with the dads taking the heavier items while we took the tents and our own bags, and together we all packed our gear.

We revisited our itinerary with everyone having a map and outline of where we'd be and when. One of the families staying behind was our emergency contact, with the day-by-day plan of our hike just in case something went wrong.  

Just in case. 

The Best Path Is Sometimes Unclear

The Best Path Isn't Always Planned

Once we loaded up our gear, we divided ourselves into the cars and trucks of our little convoy.  The dads drove themselves, sometimes without their own son in their car.  As kids, we divided ourselves by our friends and by our expected diversions.  

Some chose to ride together by what they planned to read, this was a time before Amazon Kindle books were even created, so it was real, hard bound books. Some of the boys chose their cars by the games they would play; others chose their rides not by what they wanted to do, rather, some chose who they'd ride with by who they wanted to avoid being stuck in a car for a few hours. 

As soon as everyone was settled in, our little convoy drove for a couple of hours to our base-camp, all of us watching the claustrophobic city open up to the broad horizons that stretched toward the surging mountains. It was summer, and we had turned our backs on the cluster and confinement of the city for a week of unfettered exploration. I dozed off a few different times along the way, 5 am being awful early. 

Once we pulled into the base camp, we parked the cars and stretched our legs a bit.  Some went off to shit in the woods, others merely to take a piss.  The plan was to set camp, stay for the night, then begin our 50-mile circular trek back to this particular spot.


The morning came a little too quick. Anyone who's slept outside on the cold earth knows the stiffness that comes with sleeping on dirt.  Even as a teenager it takes you a while to warm up, to stretch out the night stiffness that settles in.  The air is refreshing and recuperative, but there's something to be said for the beauty of sleeping in bed.


After a short breakfast, we broke camp and set out on the first leg of our itinerary. The terrain was rough, there were periods of where the trail had degraded to mere gravel.  Footing could be slippery, especially on slopes that didn't have switchbacks.

Photo Credit

We walked in the buddy system; each of us partnered with another teen, and you walked at whatever pace the slowest could muster.  Typically you chose to match speed with speed, but there was some partners content on drifting back.

The kids led the way, the dads trailing.  We all had a rule that if the last dad caught up, you had to clean the "latrine" at base camp.  So we hiked with momentum and a purpose.

About mid-day, the clouds rolled in, and the sky turned gray.  The change in the air was noticeable. When we had been able to be shirtless, now we were digging for our long-sleeves, and wondering about where we each had packed our rain parkas.

At once, the rain began.  Followed closely by lighting, the kind of lightning you hear during one of those storms that shake the house and scare the dog but never actually see.

Photo Credit

It wasn't long before the lightning struck a boulder not too far from where we were walking.  The shrapnel shot out, piercing what skin we had exposed from out of our parkas, pants, and packs. It sounded as if the thunder was a 12 gauge shot that went off next to your head.  It boomed around your brain, shaking the snot out of your sinuses and down your throat.

This wasn't the first time we were camping and hiking through horrible weather. The difference this time was that with the rain and lightning, we had lost the trail. We were wandering off course, and because of the lightning, we were running further off our path than we had planned. We had set out that morning to make our way to Purple Lake, but now we were surely lost. It wasn't long that we found a lake, and to this day I'm not certain it was Purple Lake, but it would suffice for the time being. 
That's because avid hikers know that if you lose your way in the forest, you want to stay in one spot so the search team can find you. 
And in short order, the dads were able to find our location and meet up with us, where we set camp and stayed through the night. 

The point of this discussion is that by writing your thoughts and publishing them, you have ZERO control over how they'll be received.  And publishing on any platform, whether a blog like this or using Amazon Kindle books as a platform for your story, you have ZERO control over how it'll be received. 

It's like planning a hike only to take the deer trail instead of the well-trodden footpath. 

As the writer, all I can do is to try and make the message as coherent as possible, one that I want to share and one that is hopefully read. Planning is essential, but often we get more out of losing our way, of walking down the deer trail than the road heavily traveled. 

It's often what we can't control that get in our way, and what leads to great discovery.  

Stumble a little through the underbrush, explore new things and find out that the path you first began has now led you down a whole new road. 

It's a journey worth discovering. 

If you're interested in reading about ways you can self-publish your own Amazon Kindle Books, or are interested in habit formation, you can check out those articles here and read a productivity and habit post here. 

3 Keys To Maximize Productivity And Improve Your Unintended Consequences

How To Be More Productive Without Meaning To Be

The Cause And Effect Of Unintended Consequences Toward Our Productivity 

Funny thing about a blog. 

The law of unintended consequences states that our actions create effects that were not what we had in mind.  It could be that you choose to sit down and watch an "innocent" film with the family, only to find out that there's a love-making scene in it. 

Hard to explain what's happening to a six year-old.

This law applies to writing as well. 

So you wrote another blog post or story.  

You write something, publish it and promote it everywhere and then wait.  Sometimes you wait and you wait and wait some more. 

Constantly refreshing your browser to see your audience and traffic results, you wait for someone to read it, you wait for someone to comment on it, and you wait for someone to promote it for you.

And while you're waiting, another funny thing happens. 

The unintended happens.

In this post, we'll discuss the law of unintended consequences as an effect of our actions.  By knowing your target goals, making small incremental gains that happen in the correct order, you'll prevent negative results and making it ten times easier to stay productive. 

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

Your blog post has stirred an emotion, a thought, an idea in someone else.  An idea that wasn't part of your intention when writing. Duh, that's why it's called unintentional.

Since beginning this kindle publishing journey and, more importantly, began to document it on this blog, I've stumbled upon a few interesting conversations.

Just recently a friend and I had an intriguing conversation about how she could get started writing.  
She asked how she could find the courage to get going, as if I had some secret confidence or potion to making it work.

As she spoke, I felt more and more like a fraud. 

I knew that it didn't take much courage to write.  

All it takes is just making the time a priority.  

Sit your ass down and write.    

What the conversation reminded me of was that we have to make it important.  Make it so important it's a habit. Like breathing. 

Then and only then would the words get put down on paper.  

Our conversation reminded me of the critical nature of staying focused on the goal. Also it was a reminder to think about the mini-steps needed to be taken, the lines that needed to be written in order to finish the novel, blog or story, that was started.

Another thing the talk reminded me of was the discipline needed, even if it meant taking a few minutes here and there between other tasks in the day, of stealing a couple minutes to get the writing down.

Life will get in the way.  That's one of the truisms, that what ever we want to do will be interrupted by things beyond your control.

There're always bills to pay, phone and text messages to reply, and emails to answer. 

Hello? Is Anybody There?

You published it, promoted it on all the Social Media platforms.  

Tried to connect with others in your area of interest and you wait.  

Again you refresh your browser and wait for the traffic. 

But still crickets. 

Anybody who writes knows the anxiety of first sharing your content and second waiting for a response from an audience. 

Another conversation I've had is with a friend who likes to tell me that they enjoy reading the posts, but never go into detail about what the theme or point of the post may be.  

While I enjoy the compliments, I get an uneasy tension as we talk.  

It's uneasy because the conversations amount to nothing more than platitudes, empty calories that are neither sustaining or nutritious. They're like a snickers bar when I'm starving.  But hey, I'm not really me when I'm hungry. At least they're reading, which I do enjoy hearing about.

In yet another recent conversation with another friend, she was telling me that she felt that she wanted to read a book.  

That's not surprising considering that in 2002, a survey as reported by the New York Times claimed that 81% of Americans claimed to have a book they wanted to write.  

The dicks at the editorial board of the New York Times and the writer Joseph Epstein epistemologically dictates that you shouldn't waste the energy, time or paper it would take to create a book.

But that's a sidebar for the point of my conversation with the friend.  

She was claiming how difficult it would be to write a book, how precious little time she had, yet how important it would be to write her book.

My advice to her was simple. 

1. Focus But Don't Obsess On Your Target: Decide on the outcome you want but don't start out trying to handle the full load, rather, find a way to work backward. This reverse planning will help you anticipate some missteps to avoid along the way that you may otherwise stay blind to with an outcome based perspective.  

Think of it like a marathon - Ugh, the thought of running makes my stomach churn and shins hurt - but if you know your distance to the finish line, and work on the steps leading up to it, the marathon is much, much easier - so I'm told. 

2. Succeed Greatly By Taking Small Steps:  You can't stand at the base of Mount Fuji and expect to get to the top in one super stride.  It takes the collective number of many, many small steps to cover the height and distance. 

Take the task at hand of writing a book, divide it up into micro-phases such as chapters.  It'll help you organize your thoughts, and organize the direction of your thoughts. 

 Think of it like eating a pizza. 

 It comes out of the oven, the cheese is boiling hot, the vegetables gleaming, and the pie is uncut.  

Looking at the size of the pizza may be overwhelming and you're unsure how you're going to eat it, much like starting out on a novel.  But just like the pizza, the cook cuts the pizza into slices, 8 pieces most likely, and now you're salivating for one.  

It's the little things that add up.

3. Pants First, Shoes Second: If you plan on going for a run, you need to put on your pants or shorts before you put on your shoes.  Know the proper sequence of events before taking on the tasks. I've written about how to put things in proper order in a previous post that you can read by clicking here: 3 Tips To Conquer Your Fears And Become The Person You Deserve

In effect, target those micro-phases, and divide them into even smaller phases.

Just like the pizza above, you can't eat a whole pie in one bite, and you can't pelican a slice in one bite either.  You're going to fold it and take one bite at a time, or if you're "cultured," you'll cut a piece off the slice and swallow it, after chewing of course. 

And my point to my friend was the same.

Take the idea of a book and divide it into small slices, then take those slices and make them into smaller pieces still.  It'll be more digestible and easier to find the time to get those mini-projects done.

Her response was that, "Wow, that doesn't seem as tough."

It's not.

The mountains we perceive are really just a molehill.  But the more we stare at the task, the more we obsess over the outcome, the greater we make the challenge for ourselves.  

By writing about my Kindle Publishing journey, it's led to conversations about time management, productivity, habit formation, and the importance of knowing your ONE thing to focus upon. 

Those are the unintended consequences of putting myself out there. 

If you're struggling with a task or goal, focus on the steps you want to take, put them in proper order and get started.  

To quote Joe Strummer of the band The Clash: 

My Kindle Publishing Lesson: Beg, Borrow and Steal Your Way To Becoming A Better Writer

Finding Your Ideal Reader And Developing A More Confident Voice In Your Writing

If you're like me, doing something you love can be the greatest thing in the world.

When I started my Kindle Publishing Journey, I didn't know what I didn't know.  I've learned a ton over the 6 months I've been writing and self-publishing.

But one thing I do know and have learned along the way is that passion alone, while great, won't suffice. It's like eating a chocolate only diet.  It may sound delicious and you may salivate just thinking about it, but all it will do is constipate you until your clogged arteries make your heart explode.

But doing something you love is also incredibly rewarding.

It could be surfing that really stokes you.

Or perhaps running in the early morning hours is what you find the greatest of thrills.

For some who are more like myself, getting lost in writing is exhilarating.  I can lose track of hours without even knowing that the sun has set for the night.

Like stumbling through a dark, misty forest unsure of what lies in the dense woods is what it's like in the monolog in my head.

Seeing my words on the page is like finding a clearing in the bramble and brush, my vision is more clear, the story is more focused.

It's these moments of clarity that I see why all the images in my head scream that they needed to be written and thoughts to be shared with someone else.

All without having to say a word.

As Stephen King wrote in his "On Writing," being able to write truly is a form of ESP.  It's telepathy with the reader, a way to worm around in their heads, their thoughts, and their dreams.

But writing can also be absolutely horrible.

It's not the fear of the blank page.

No way.  I can ramble with the best of them.

For me, a blank page is like a canvas that I get to paint on.  If it's any good, I'll share it with others.

If it sucks, it's practice in colors, paint strokes and textures for the painting that I will eventually share.

It's part of the exhilaration for me.

Those are some of the important things I've learned through my Kindle Publishing experiences.

Another one?

Writing is both exhilarating and terrifying.

Especially when I re-read the words on the page and they aren't as beautifully erudite as when I heard first them in my head.

The flow of language, the momentum of the story and the way I "heard" it all in my head doesn't have the same appeal once I see it upon the page. I think of it like middle school, when I'd recite a short couple lines that I'd rehearse to say to one of the many girls I had on crush on.  Only, the next day I'd stumble and stutter those lines, more concerned with the new zit on my nose and whether they're focused on it than what I wrote the night before and was now reciting.

When my writing is bad, it's terrifying.

When I think about the readers, I wonder how much they want to choke me out, laugh at me and deride my thoughts.

 That is, if there are any.

I also worry they will see through me, and discover what I fraud I am. It's terrifying that they may find my voice stilted, unimaginative and most terrifying of all, boring.

Everyone who's ever tried their hand at writing knows these feelings.  From school to letters and creatively, it's a challenge not to feel like you're overexposed, naked in front of the cameras, standing pants-less in front of a crowd of people that are our friends.

But how do you overcome the fear of being exposed?  Of being unimportant? Of being seen as a  fraud?

The ABC's Of Developing Your Writing Skills And Finding Your Voice

•  A) First, choose one person who you write for. They could be someone you know, someone you wish to know, or someone you create out of your imagination.  In other industries, it's called an "ideal reader."

Just like in life, you're not going to be liked by everyone equally.  Some will really like and care for you, and that's a lucky thing to have.  Others aren't going to give two shits about you.  Others still may despise you without you even knowing about it.

So creating an ideal reader is important for you to know what to say, how you should say it, and how you hope they'll receive it.  It's a lot easier to talk with a friend, one who knows you intimately and you know them than with any stranger you may try to meet and get to know.

Writing, in simple terms, is sharing ideas with an intimate friend without speaking.

•  B) Second, gain confidence through minor accomplishments.  

Building positive habits is about micro-accomplishments.

In time, those micro-accomplishments allow you to build a foundation that you can then go on and make newer micro-accomplishments.

Think of it as running a marathon.

You have to train for it, but you want to take those strides in micro-phases.  That is, you run aspects of the marathon, building your endurance and stamina over time.  But you also focus on the little things, like your step, making sure you run heel-to-toe.  You work on lengthening your stride, especially when tired. But every step is one more in building a better way to run a marathon for you.

Taken together, your strategy, training and technique, you will form a number of micro-accomplishments that, in time, prepares you to run a full marathon.

Not that I've ever attempted to run a marathon.

It sounds like a horrible experience to me, but then again, I can't run.

Not because of any particular disability, just when I run I look like a gazelle jumping on hooves while their legs recoil underneath their body in a circular, disjointed motion.

If anyone was running next to me, it'd look to an unsuspecting observer that I was trying to kick the person next to me on every jump I took.

•  C) Finally, Beg, Borrow and Steal

Like most innovators, there are three main ways to gain confidence and mastery. The best way to overcome the fear of writing is easily broken into three techniques that I call Beg, Borrow, and Steal.

It's a popular notion that artists - as all writers are - are tapped into some greater universal connection.

That their ideas are floating around in their heads like a swirling, boiling cauldron of ideas. False! Another wrongful trope is that artists are inspired by a muse that only they can hear and they catch bolts of lightning.

What every artist does is looks for ideas that they can incorporate into what they're trying to say.

Andy Warhol famously borrowed from popular culture and popular advertising to make his iconic paintings.

Pablo Picasso is credited with the saying; "Good artists borrow, great artists steal."

Even famous tinkerers in history like Thomas Edison knew this truth - his inventions took gleefully from the thoughts, research, and design of a man named Nikola Tesla.

1. Beg An Expert: If writing is scary for you, think about ways you can get information from another source, preferably someone in that genre that you respect. It could be a friend who's already doing what you want to accomplish, or someone that is so far ahead of the game it's a dream interview. Ask them until they acquiesce - Twitter is a great, easy gateway to find experts you want to connect with. Ask to the point of bothering them.  Beg them for an interview about how they wrote their piece, their story, their book.  For most of them, they were once in your shoes as well.  It will offer some helpful insight and motivation to keep you on track.
2. Borrow From The Chef: Borrow from a well-thought idea.  Develop the thought as your own and write it down.  Like watching a cooking show and trying to recreate the menu, borrow what you like, but embellish it with your own spices. What was it that impressed you, and how would you explain it to your ideal reader?
3. Steal From The Master: Steal from the experts. Don't get me wrong here.  I am not advocating stealing someone else's words; that's plagiarism, and it can get you in a world of trouble, from legal and otherwise.  But steal the idea then develop it in a way that only you could, and in a way that makes sense to your ideal reader.

Remember, there's nothing new under the sun.

There have been billions of people who have lived on this Earth,  all with dissimilar backgrounds from you but with similar thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams.  That means that there's nothing new that can be written, rather, just how you write that is unique to you.

So go ahead, steal the plot line from your favorite movie or book.  Develop the story telling and characters in your way and you'll have a unique story to share and call your own.  In my own Kindle Publishing adventure, I've stumbled upon all of these areas.

So if you struggle with your writing, or confidence in doing anything new, just beg for the knowledge from an expert, borrow an idea or whole-heartedly steal the idea and make it your own.

Just change the names to protect the innocent and guilty.

5 Tips To Make A Change For A Better You

Small Behavioral Changes That Will Help You Become A Better You

This post is about behavioral modification and habit forming.

We need to define habits and behavioral modification as making subtle changes in our unconscious actions (habits) and learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior (new habits).

So, how does this apply to you and my writing and Kindle Publishing journey?

It's about ways to overcome challenges that seem too grandiose and too large to otherwise accomplish.

It's about making major changes in how we create and reinforce actions, good and bad, and how we can make small changes for major accomplishments.

It's about learning new tactics, taking shorter decisive actions to achieve greater mastery and improved productivity.

As I've written previously, practice makes permanent.

The trick is about taking small detailed steps that you can build upon.

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

In a popular, well known book by Jim Collins called "Good To Great," he writes a story about two groups of people that are attempting the overcome the same challenge in two distinctly different ways.

What both groups were were attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole during a time when luxury was low and the risk was great.


Get It From Amazon - Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

One group led by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott would "batch" their efforts.  They would hike as far as they could and for as long as they could maintain it, weather permitting.  Trudging upward of 40+ miles a day on nicer days, they'd hunker down and rest on days where the weather was too large a challenge to overcome.

The other group of four hikers led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set out on their itinerary with a more manageable, reasonable goal.  The second group chose to hike 20 miles a day, the weather being accommodating or not.

The winner was Amundsen's second group, who beat the British by a full 5 weeks!

So what does that mean for us to improve our productivity?

It's proof that taking large tasks and breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks is a great productivity tip.

Another example of this tactic is in Major League Baseball (MLB).

 In a recent study, MLB points out that starting pitchers that go the full game, called a complete game in the parlance, is down in recent years.

In fact, in the MLB study, they claim that of all the 2,700+ games or so, only 60 complete games were recorded. That equals only one complete game for every 45.6+ starts.

Of course, there are factors that come into play with these statistics, such as highly specialized relievers or games being broken up by the offensive team in the late innings for examples.

It also means that it's much, much harder to do something of quality over long periods of time.

Sustainability is one of the keys then.

Most MLB pitchers work about 5 innings or have a total pitch count before they're substituted for, with another 4-5 days off before their next start. Simply put, shorter durations of pitching with longer recovery as a tactic is supported by the previous data.

To Make A Change Requires A Conscious Choice

So what do the Antarctic expeditions and Major League Baseball analogies have to teach us about behavioral changes and improve our productivity?

They teach us that having short, obtainable goals can get us further than running to our limits of endurance or trying to do things only when conditions are near perfect.

So how do we make the incremental changes to have monumental gains?

In a recent blog post on the Psychology Today website, they discuss the problems of changing habits and how to make long-term behavioral changes more effective.

The slant of the article was that there are some concrete steps that have to be taken to make positive changes in our behaviors, and that without these steps, behavioral modification - habit formation - can be extremely difficult.

5 Tips To Make A Change For The Better

1. Decide To Make A Change:  

To make a substantial change, you need to make a clear decision that there is something that needs to change.  It could be something life altering such as eating healthier and beginning an exercise routine, or something minor like waking up 15 minutes earlier every day.  The point is that there needs to be something that you recognize as a problem and one that you want to correct.

The next step after deciding you want to make a change is the hardest.  Believe that change is possible.  If your habit is being late for everything, and you believe that you're destined to be tardy to things, you'll never make that change.  So the struggle is to decide that the bad habit is something that needs to be changed, and you need to change your thinking about tackling that problem.

2. Think About Why The Problem Exists: 

If you're chronically tardy, why is that?  Is it you're easily distracted and lose track of time, traffic is poor in your area, or something else?  It could also be a subtle issue of control - controlling the times of other people's involvement with you, placing a subconscious hierarchy that places yourself over others.  Perhaps it's a subtle grab for attention.  Take a hard look at why tardiness is a chronic condition. If it's attention, think about ways to get that attention in other, more positive ways.

3. Inning by Inning or Step By Step: 

Just as it's difficult to win a baseball game from first pitch to final out, making a behavioral change requires a lot of small, adjustable steps to make it permanent. The focus at this point should be to set goals that are closer to where we're starting off rather than where we plan on ending up.  For example, the article discusses a scenario where if the problem is being tardy by 30 minutes, try to set a more obtainable goal of only being late by 10 or 15 minutes.

By establishing shorter goals, you'll see quick victories and that sense of achievement will build momentum toward the next goal. Master one small step then add on a new step, like climbing a set of stairs. It's the process of meeting small goals on a step by step basis that helps you reach your destination much easier, and much more permanent.

The reason for this is that we are hard-wired in our brains to make regular actions into habits over time.  By making small improvements, we're building the neural pathways that help establish a new routine and that routine is what we're doing to establish new habits.

In other words, think about habit formation as a baseball team.  Win the game with a majority of pitchers in each inning rather than relying on one pitcher to carry the team to the final out.

4. Accept Slip-Ups:  

The mistake that most people make when changing their behavior and habits is that they approach it from an absolutist approach.  Absolutism is the "all-or-none", black or white approach.  The problem with this is that there isn't room for mistakes and slip-ups, which is part of the process of behavioral modification.

One of the biggest mistakes dieters make is focusing on the short-term benefits and goals of changing their eating habits rather than the long-term benefits.  We choose to lose 5 extra pounds and are really good for a few days.

But then we slip up.  And then we beat ourselves up about the mess up.

The absolute approach is one of the problems.

Knowledge is experiential.  We learn by doing, but more important, we learn by making mistakes through trial and error.  Making a change in our habits is a process of learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior.

Diets that stick are ones that follow the guidelines outlined above. Steps that successful dieters take are deciding to make a change, examining why they've adopted the negative behaviors, to creating a process of smaller victories over large changes.

One other thing that helps lifestyle diets make the biggest change is the ability to understand that mistakes are going to happen.  You're changing a habit, which takes time and concentrated effort, and so mistakes are inevitable.

So the best advice is to plan for those slip-ups.

We can convince ourselves that it's ok to have a "cheat day" once a week.  Over time that cheat day isn't so important, and we can eventually limit those days to twice a month and then to never after we achieve new habits.

5. Make Your Habit Accountable: 

After we realize that there’s a need for change, and we decide to take action, the next step is to make our goals accountable.

There are two ways to make your goals and habits accountable within the guidelines we’ve discussed already.

The first is to make a small table or calendar to chart your progress.  For example, as a writer there’s a number of directions each character could go within the plot of the story arc.

If you write each one out, we end up with pages of unnecessary deviations from the central point and waste a bunch of time.

Perhaps it’s the thought of writing the book in your mind that’s limiting you.  By taking small, decisive steps each and every day, the word count stacks up over time.

A good example is to take a calendar and put a large “X” for every day you write.   Jerry Seinfeld spoke about this as his way of holding himself accountable for his creative work.

What it requires is marking a calendar with an “X” every day you write to a word count or duration of time eventually the calendar becomes blotted by all the marks.

It becomes a tool to hold you accountable, one with its own momentum, a chain of action that you can see and reflect upon. In his discussion of his creative technique, Jerry Seinfeld said, “don’t break the chain.”

The second way to hold yourself accountable is to set your goals and tell others about it.  Ask friends and family to give you subtle reminders any time that they see you slipping up or not making headway in your process.

Be careful about this, however.

Asking friends and family to help you can also become annoying if you only tell them the overall goal.  The further you are from where you want to be the more it will appear to them that you may not be working hard enough.

So give them small goals to help oversee with your behaviors rather than the final destination of your goal.

This is an example why business coaching is such a lucrative profession.  Business coaches work with individuals, typically entrepreneurs, to hold them to small goals for their business and professional growth.

The coaches may have an idea of the overall goal for the business growth, but they focus on more manageable steps that the individual can accomplish.  This helps the entrepreneur stay on task and keep clear metrics in mind.

In Conclusion

We all want to improve at something.  From losing weight, playing a piece of music, to writing and business productivity, setting small manageable goals will help create regular actions that will develop into new habits.

And by taking decisive actions with the help of professionals and friends, we're apt to follow through with our plans, making our goals much more realistic.

It's by deciding what we want to change and the small steps we need to take that the impossible becomes possible.  It's true in sports and business, it's true in writing and other creative endeavors, and it's true with health and fitness.

So decide what you want to change and get started now.

JUST GET THE DAMNED THING STARTED

You Never Know Enough

Why Waiting For Permission Is The Greatest Mistake You'll Make

In the past, I've written about my self-publishing journey through Kindle Publishing as well as tips on how to manage your time more effectively, conquer your fears and improve your productivity.

None of those tips matter if you don't take action.

The biggest hurdle for anything is often the first one.

If you're like me, you're always thinking about new places to go visit, new adventures, always sketching out new ideas for stories or making plans for new career paths.


In other words you have interest in doing something out of the norm and out of your comfort zone.

Perhaps you want to start a creative project like taking up guitar or painting.

Maybe you want to leave your job to start a new business, or perhaps you don't enjoy your classes and want to find a new degree emphasis to focus upon.

But you never get started.

Why?

We're convinced from everything in our lives that we need permission to do something.

This has been called the permission mindset. (Read about the limitations of this HERE)

In school we seek permission to leave our seat, to get up and go to the bathroom.

As kids and teenagers, we seek permission from our parents to go to a movie, or stay overnight at a friends house.

We ask permission before we begin to study a certain subject in school. The idea being that we need our parents and other agencies to help foster us during our curriculum, with the trade-off that we will have stable job prospects and eventually (hopefully) pay them back.

We seek permission from our bosses and HR to take time off from work outside of the normal work schedule.

We ask permission to marry someone, and ask them permission to consider a career choice when our trajectories veer off our calculations.

In addition, we seek permission of the worst kind.

Permission from knowledge.

And that's the worst, most debilitating type of permission to wait for.

What's Permission From Knowledge? 

Simply put, we have been conditioned to seek permission from a source other than ourselves.  

But wait, isn't knowledge a good thing? 

Yes.  And no.  

When there's nobody to turn to, we seek information before acting.  We study up on the latest trends and modes of doing that thing we don't know enough about before we try to act.  

Thing is, there's always going to be something more to learn. 

Always something more to learn, something more you can improve upon.  

But that's it's own Sisyphean task.  It can never be accomplished.

You "push" the boulder up the hill, only to find it rolls down the other side.  Every time. 

It's both a coping mechanism and a stalling technique. 

We cope with our fear of not knowing by trying to learn more about a subject. 

In effect we stall all our actions as we chase down the rabbit hole of information.  

We're seeking permission from the knowledge that we gain in order to begin. 

But what really is happening? 

We are paralyzed by our inaction.  We are more content analyzing then acting.  

It's the Paralysis By Analysis effect. 

Look Before You Leap, But Dammit, Jump!

Just get going!

As I said earlier, the biggest challenge is often just getting started. 

It's also been said many times over that knowledge is experiential.  

We learn more by doing than observing and what separates those who do and those who don't is that the ones who act are more successful.

They don't wait for permission to act. 

Sometimes that learning process is messy.  You get on your bike, ride down the block a little too fast and fall, skinning your knee.  

But for sure, the next time you'll avoid the same mistakes.

The only way to know is by getting back on the bike and riding down the street again. 

And breaking the cycle that the permission mindset holds on us can be extremely difficult and limiting.  

I read about Kindle Publishing before I started working on self-publishing.

I don't know everything about it, nor do I understand how to market my stuff very well.

But I'm learning a ton as I stumble along, hopefully better and smarter today than I was yesterday. 

Whether you have a fitness goal, or a job prospect, the time to act is now. 

Get off the couch and get running.  

Spend a little time polishing up your resume and send it out.  

Call a potential new client.  

Whatever your desire is, get off your ass and get it done.  

You should know what you're getting into, that much is for sure.  

But it shouldn't hold you back.  

You don't need permission to get started. 

Just get going. 

The 3 Things I Learned Releasing 3 Short Stories In 3 Months

My Kindle Publishing Journey Updated

In 3 months I released 3 different short stories and focused all my attention on promoting just one title.  

Here's what I learned:

Lesson 1: Promote The Hell Out Of It

The first thing I learned was the need for promotion. 

In June 2015, I released The Ballad Of John Walker through Amazon's Kindle Publishing platform.

For those unfamiliar with Kindle Publishing, it's an eBook delivery service run by Amazon that offers millions, perhaps billions of titles.  The best part is you don't need to buy a Kindle to read their offerings. You can access their library by downloading a free Kindle Reader App for all devices, PC, Mac, Android, Windows and iOS.

And I promoted the HELL out of it.

Places I promoted the title were:

• Google Plus
• Facebook - private and in groups
• Facebook Ad
• Good Reads
• Daily Free ebooks
• Addicted To eBooks
• Just Kindle Books
• That's My eBook
• Book Praiser
• Free Discounted Books
• Reddit 

I promoted the story on these format as well as the programs that Amazon offers on their Kindle Publishing platform - KDP Select - an exclusivity program that allows for free and discounted pricing.

For two months I spent my entire time promoting the title to free and paid platforms and may have received a lot of virtual pat's on my back, but actual downloads of the book?  About 100 titles in all.

While 100 readers may seem like a lot, it's a small trickle in the bucket that is floating in the sea that is the Kindle Publishing platform (among others).

And Then...

Lesson 2: Nobody Gives A S#IT If You Don't Promote

Shortly after I published "The Ballad of John Walker", I quietly released a second collection, a three-story title, Mayonnaise and Other Stories and the downloads were about 1/10th of what I experienced previously.

The main difference? I hardly promoted the title compared to "The Ballad of John Walker".

Mayonnaise and Other Stories was enrolled in KDP Select. I made mention of it on G+ and Facebook.

That was about the extent of it.

And the downloads and reviews were stagnant.  Sitting online waiting to be stumbled upon, to be discovered, but was more like a lonely Pygmy Tarsier looking for a lover.  What's a Pygmy Tarsier?  Google it, they're a primate that was thought to be extinct until one was inadvertently killed in a trap.

It was a shock to the farmers who found the Pygmy Tarsier, and even more so for the scientists who had claimed it an extinct species.  But I wonder more about the possible remaining Pygmy Tarsier, waiting for her date to come and sweep her off her feet.

So the lonely Pygmy Tarsier can't just swipe right on Tinder or sign-up on Ashley Madison, but just has to sit around waiting.

She's without any loved one and probably, like most of us who've been stood-up before, crying into the night. Sad.

Much like the collection "Mayonnaise and Other Stories".

By not promoting it, the collection is sitting around waiting for a date that may never arrive.

Especially if it's considered extinct.

But Wait, There's More...

Lesson 3: Keep At It, But Don't Over Do It

In late July 2015, I uploaded another title, It's Not The Things We Say with the same little, to no, marketing and advertising.

Like all things in life, momentum is created by exerting energy.  I did nothing to create any momentum behind the titles, in part because I was concerned about "Promotion Fatigue" and "Banner Blindness" on the part of any readers here.

"Promotion Fatigue" is what I call the process when we're inundated by too much advertising and marketing.  We get tired of it and tune out the messenger.

"Banner Blindness" has been defined as the blurring of banners and ads online from the original content.  It's the visual representation of Promotion Fatigue.  We know that there is something like an ad being displayed but we have become so inundated by their constant placement, we tune them out.

So between my concern about Promotion Fatigue, Banner Blindness and looking at the ROI - Return On Investment - that slowed my marketing and promotional reach.

But with a few more titles on the near horizon that I'm working on right now, "A Fine Day For A Swim" and its sister accompaniment, "The Palm", as well as "Gunner", I'll have to rethink my promotional strategies.

Additionally the long-term plan is to comprise these published stories into a larger collection and place it on a few other platforms such as iBooks, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

So, if you've been one of the few who have downloaded my short stories so far, a huge THANK YOU.

For those that haven't - I don't take it personally.  I'll just cry into my pillow until you do purchase one.


If you'd like to download a copy of any of my titles, click the titles below:

The Ballad Of John Walker

Mayonnaise And Other Stories

It's Not The Things We Say

How To Get Better At Damn-Well Anything

From Kindle Publishing To Sports And More, Become A Master At Anything With These Tips

This post started out as an answer to a question on Quora.

For those of you not familiar with Quora, it's a question and answer platform much like eHow or Answers.com that allows you to use social networking to get answers to your questions, or offering up solutions to the questions being asked.

The original question was how to get better at creative writing.

But honestly, these tips could be used to help you achieve efficiency in pretty much any task you'd like to improve on.

How To Get Better At Writing In 3 Steps

Some of what I'm going to discuss is how to get better in phases. 

The first is the process phase.  This is sitting down, doing the grunt work.  Digging the trenches that are necessary to build your story's universe.  It's the outline, the foundation, the skeleton of getting better. 

The second phase with getting better is called the craft phase of writing.  It's mastering the language and techniques.  It's learning how to edit your writing to make it crisp, or as Earnest Hemingway said "write one true sentence". 

Finally, you need to learn time management skills or as I call it, the life phase.  It's too easy to get distracted, allowing the outside world to interrupt what you're exploring in the inner-most crevices of your imagination.  So learning how to focus on one task then moving on will help you become more effective as well as more efficient. 

The Process Phase

The process phase is like these gears. 

They grind and grind, turning each other in unison, propelling the machine forward. 

If one doesn't work, they whole machine ends.

You need to write.  

The process of writing isn't one that you do only inspired. You need to sit down and work on writing everyday. 

If you want to get better at the process, you need to sit down in the chair (metaphorically speaking) and write.  

You'll learn as you go.  

But basically sit down and write. 

Write daily, regularly even.  

This is true of any task.  From writing, to playing the guitar, to playing basketball.  It's due to spending the necessary time, the hours, needed to get better. 

As I said, write daily, regularly even.  

Jerry Seinfeld talked about not breaking the chain.  He would post a calendar on his wall and make a big "X" every day that he wrote.  Eventually the process took on it's own importance. 

To learn and master a task, you get better by doing a task in specific time periods with highly-focused repetition.  Malcolm Gladwell discusses this as the 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers: The Story of Success: Malcolm Gladwell: 9780316017930: Amazon.com: Books

But don't worry if, right now, you don't have a lot of time to write.  

You're learning how to get better.  It takes time. 

You need to build up the muscle, and that takes practice to build the endurance.  

Stephen King talks about how he began his writing career by prioritizing and finding time at lunch at his job. He talks about that in his outstanding book, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft eBook: Stephen King: Kindle Store

Charles Bukowski wrote while working for the US mail department. 

Meanwhile, digital and ebook sensation Hugh Howey (hugh howey: Kindle Store) began to write while working at a bookstore, using his lunch hour to get some prose worked out. 

In that time Hugh Howey wrote his bestseller, WOOL to much acclaim and literally much fortune. 

So it can be done. 

The Craft Phase

To learn the craft of writing involves a few different things.  The first thing to consider is, again, sit down and write.  

Then edit your writing.  But get someone else to look it over.  Preferably someone with more than just basic grammar skills.  Get someone with the ability to take a red line through your most important prose.  Find a set of eyes more clear than your own. A set of eyes that can see the forest AND the trees. 

Then, take the time to think about what it all means, what you're trying to say. What is the larger picture, the broader message of what you're trying to convey.  

This is the theme of your work. 

For a doctor it may be the health of her patients.  For a mechanic it's fixing and maintaining the life of your transmission.  

To the teacher the theme of their work is to make an indelible imprint on the future of society, one student at a time. 

So theme is important. 

Meanwhile, you also need to get better at how to write. 

One major way to accelerate this growth is to mimic a master.  

You should write in your own voice, but should also try styles of those you admire.  

Just sit down, write the first 3 pages of a novel or story you like.  Imitate what someone has already done, and done well.  This is not to publish a plagiarized story, but to learn on a different level the song, the flow that a writer that's not you has already accomplished.  

Think about it in a different art form.  

Musicians learn to play other musicians songs.  

Classic painters are taught to outline and trace the lines and brush strokes of masters.  

The Guild Approach To Apprenticeship

In the past, there were guilds where artists spent years, ten years in fact, under the guidance of a master.  

There were guilds for masonry, guilds for artists, for tanners, for iron workers.  These were kind of like modern unions but ones dedicated to bettering the craft of the practitioners. 

But the work was grueling.  

The apprentice would clean, sweep up the studio, do whatever menial task that was needed to be done.  

It was the karate kid routine of cleaning the pigs stye, of cleaning the slop up for the master in order to make the master's job easier.  

But it also served a larger purpose. 

The master didn't teach the student about everything that they knew, rather it was up to the student to study and mimic the master until one day the student was able to move on from apprenticeship to craftsman.  

Over years of working on the craft, and only after all of those years would they move from craftsman to master. 

Why? 

To learn what works for others and gain the foundation and the fundamentals of what others have mastered.  

Actors take lessons from coaches. Even Academy Award winners take classes to get better. 

Singers have a teacher to make sure that the singer is hitting the right notes and staying in time.  

You learn by doing.  And you learn more by getting corrections from someone who knows. 

Perhaps it's time to bring back the guilds...

The Life Phase

This section is divided into two sub-categories.  The creative side and the discipline side.  

The ultimate battle between the id and the ego.  

In the life phase of getting better at writing, you need to live it.  

Live your life.  Go on walks, commune with nature.  Touch your feet on sand and your face into water. 

Observe the way the light reflects in the trees while the sun is setting.  

Record every moment of it.  Document it.  Write it all down, write it down over and over again.  

Sit in a park and listen to how people talk, touch, laugh and cry with each other.  

Somewhere these observations will appear in the story.  The'll appear when you need them the most, even if they only appear in one story and limited to a line in length.  

The second section of the life phase is time management. 

It's the ego of your creative side.  The one where, just like in the process phase, you sit down and get to work.  

But you need to be organized - one of ego's greater traits - when you do this. 

Life Happens.  

It happens to everyone, everywhere.  We have a finite amount of time on this Earth, and with it, we have a finite amount of energy to accomplish all that we want. 

And life doesn't care that you're spinning the All-American Masterpiece in your skull, waiting to unleash it on the world.  You have bills to pay, mouths to feed and jobs to get to in order to take care of those responsibilities.  

There's never a good time to get started, there'll always be something else that comes up.  

So you need to find a way to block out the time and sequester yourself within your world. 

Find a way to turn off emails and your phone.  For god's sake turn off your phone. And TV is a no-no.  It will suck the minutes and hours from you like a Vampire draining a victim.  

One technique to help is set realistic time goals. 

The Pomodoro Technique

 I've written about this before on the blog, and you can check out the articles by clicking HERE (The Pomodoro Technique)  and HERE (Time Management Tips).

What the Pomodoro Technique teaches is to set small standards of time with specific breaks built into the process.  

First, get a timer.  

Set it for a small, realistic amount of time you can work on your writing (or any other task).  

Second, sit down and write (or get to work). 

Third, and this is most important, when the timer goes off, take a specific break from ALL activities.  

STOP - that's the key.  When the timer sounds, you have to stop.  Get up and get away from what you were working on.  

The recommended start is 20 minutes of work, followed by 5 minutes of ZERO activities related to the work you were doing. It'll help you relax.  

   

 It's interval training for work.

Just like a workout plan, you need time to recover those muscles that you were exerting, and we all know that the brain is an organ but also one giant muscle. 

That means it needs down time after exertion as well. 

Anything you want to master is a process.  You wouldn't want a surgeon coming straight from High School to perform open-heart surgery on you, would you? 

Of course not.  

It takes years of practice, focused, attentive practice to master a subject.  But if you work daily, on small manageable tasks, you too can master what you're after. 

These 3 phases of task mastery we discussed will help you become better, faster.  

From the process phase to the craft phase and finally, the life phase, learning how to manage all three will help you. 

But you have to sit down and start.  That's the secret to any journey.