#you know those posts that are all ''create small writing goals to reduce pressure'' yeah writing this was like that

[tracybirds]

hello hello hello, I loved Fab Five Feb so much last year and I couldn’t resist taking part again this year! This is for John’s week, to go along with the prompt “mountains” <3 Thanks @gumnut-logic for putting this all together :D

Given it took two weeks to write this lil oneshot, it has very much not been proofread but that’s life for the moment :P now let’s see if I can coax Scott out to play :D

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There were colours you couldn’t see in space. Plenty you could, more than enough to break up the inky darkness of the universe.

Blues, of course, with a planet falling away beneath his footsteps, and bursts of red, white and blue that would remind him of summer fireworks if they weren’t so static and silent and familiar. Greens and browns blurred together from four hundred kilometres away.

It was beautiful even without the vibrant colours that accompanied life. Breath-taking even. He could look out across an entire world like a character in the movies of his childhood. He could spend a lifetime wondering about the people below.

But it was true that there were colours you couldn’t see. And John was starting to forget.

***

“Red’s warm and stuff, I don’t know,” said Alan. “Like a really hot fire. You know how the wood gets at the bottom.”

But that wasn’t right, John knew. Red was cold and distant and ancient, a remnant of the early universe. Red was the hazy image of the Pillars of Creation tacked to his childhood wall, the rust filled dirt caught in the cracks of his father’s space suit, the memory of life rushing away from his brother as the blood drained from his face.

Red was unforgiving.

And it had saved him time after time. John knew that he searched for red when he was scared, when he desperately needed his little brother to come for him. He’d see red in the end, or nothing at all.

***

Blue reminded him of Gordon and his irrepressible spark of life. He laughed when John brought it up one day.

“You know me and the sea – we’re full of life!”

That wasn’t quite what he’d meant, blue with its joy and peace and fondness for home. But he wasn’t wrong either – he only had to look down to see the bustling blue planet beneath him, teeming over with the life he saw in his brother.

“But I don’t know, John, blue’s always seemed pretty cold to me. And kinda sad too.”

John didn’t have much to say to that. He knew for Gordon that blue and the ocean occupied two disparate parts of his mind.

For most people, the Planet Earth was the ground they lived on, the solid certainty of brown dirt and green grass beneath their feet. For John, the Earth was the backdrop to his life. Beautifully, wonderfully, and undeniably blue.

Gordon grinned, sweeping his blue hair back with a blue hand, the blue light in his eyes transmitted through the hologram.

Blue was home.

***

“Orange? John, just look in a mirror.”

Scott wasn’t looking at him, rifling through a stack of papers as he spoke, and misses the scowl that settles on John’s face.

“I’m serious, Scott.”

He glances up at the projection that hovers above the solid oak desk.

“What’s this all about anyway? You wanna talk colours, go bug Virgil.”

“Scott, I just…”

He huffs and shakes his head.

“Never mind then.”

He only ever sees orange out of the corner of his eye after all.

***

“Oh, wow.”

Virgil cut himself off, the golden glow settling across his face. The rescue had been as uneventful as a rescue could be, and Scott was already halfway home, leaving Virgil to haul the gear from across the Atlantic all alone. Or rather, not quite alone.

Silence fell across the cockpit.

“John, you should see this.”

“What is it?”

“The sunlight falling across the mountains. It’s beautiful.”

John looked out, beyond the sterile holograms and the space junk that littered his view, catching a glimpse of the day-night terminator below as he soared overhead.

“You’re at the Andes now?”

“Yeah.”

John could hear the light in his brother’s voice, how it transformed his speech into wondrous awe at the sight of a sunset sky. From orbit though, it was a mere smudge across the face of the planet.

“Tell me.”

And he does.

He paints him a picture of soft pink clouds and tangerine skies. The dark grey wash of the mountains on the horizon, glowing a deep blush at their crowns. The bright light reflecting from the lakes below, burning a brilliant white that left John blinking back tears against a glare he couldn’t see until it died into shadow.

There were colours you couldn’t see in space. Sights unique to the planet below. But Virgil had made colours come to life and brought John back to their home to see them for as long as he could remember. And with his brother at his side, he was hard pressed to forget.

[itslikethatfrenchthing]

050: HOW TO SHOW UP AND STICK TO A HIGH CONVERTING CONTENT PLAN [PART 1]

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Today’s talking point:

I'm always after really detailed breakdowns on how people organise their time to be able to create a lot of content without getting stuck on a couple of posts & not created as much as they wanted.

To celebrate episode 50 of Blog It Boss It Radio, this is the first of a two part series all about how to show up and stick to a high converting content plan!

In this episode, we're going to cover the first four tips all about how to create and stick to a content plan while reducing procrastination, along with tips on how to stay motivated and really maintain focus and consistency with your content. 

HOW TO WRITE BETTER SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

#1 | Reframe Procrastination

We tend to think about procrastination and our lack of consistency as a label. We call ourselves procrastinators. We say: “I'm a terrible procrastinator.”

As I was doing a bit of research for this, I came across something from Mel Robbins. She says that procrastination is a habit. It's a habit, not a quality. It's not a trait. It's not a personality type, it's just a habit. And actually more than that, it responds to stress. 

We need to look at this from the angle of the fact that procrastination is actually a response - a coping mechanism that we experience when we feel stressed in our lives. And we use it as a way of diffusing that level of stress, then we feel overwhelmed and that whole spiral starts all over again.

But if procrastination really is a habit, that means that we can scientifically break that habit and replace it with something that is way more productive. That way, we can actually manipulate our coping mechanisms with our own stress and how we respond to that. 

This is a game changer: we can break habits. We can reframe procrastination with a positive habit. Studies have shown that 80% of people who commit to getting a task done for five minutes are way more likely to actually get it done. So just say to yourself, “okay, I'm going to work on my content for five minutes.” I promise you, you'll be much more likely to get that task done. 

How to reframe procrastination:

Manipulate our old thought patterns in the way that we think about content creation 

We want to position ourselves as the go-to expert in our field, but we really can't do that if we are constantly putting things off.

 Create a game plan to help keep you on track

Half the battle is to show up and just start. 

Recognise your thoughts and have discipline

Discipline is a muscle that you strengthen over time. But I don't think we can always rely on discipline because sometimes life happens and you’re scared about a new project so you keep putting it all off. Instead, be really practical and anytime you feel those thought patterns creeping, recognise what’s happening.

Give yourself a break

When you feel negative thoughts creeping in, sometimes you need a moment. Don't be afraid to give yourself five minutes. After those five minutes are over, if you’re still not feeling it, shift gears and do something else. 

Motivation leads to momentum and momentum leads to motivation. It's almost a cause and effect duo where you're always in that circle. If you lose your motivation, you're going to lose momentum and if you lose momentum you'll lose your motivation.

If we apply this to our content creation, we are much more likely to stay on course, to actually publish our content consistently, to show up, to do all the things and be the things we know we have the potential of being. 

Psst…want my “3-Month Content Calendar” Template? It’s a free download you can get by clicking the button below.  It’s a great asset to add to your organisational system and keep handy whenever you’re planning out new content.

#2 | Find Your Pace

Sometimes you just have this surge of energy and you think…

Yes! I'm going to create amazing Instagram posts seven days a week. I'm going to show up every single day. I'm going to do two IGTVs a week and have a podcast and a blog post…

The list goes on.

In the beginning, it feels like it's all going to be so amazing and you feel so pumped for a few months. Then, things start slowing down and basically you end up ditching everything altogether. How many times do you think that happens to a lot of different people? (All the time!)

I want to prevent that and when it happens, it's something I like to call content burnout. We even saw this with some of the biggest content creators at the end of 2019; they were tired, they were unhappy, and they felt this insane amount of pressure around creating content.

It can be as simple as someone might wake up one day and think, you know what I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. It's not fun. It's stressful. I'm having to force it and that's not the goal. 

Pacing yourself is so important because again, we're running this marathon. If we’re not enjoying the process of content creation and it feels like a chore, then it's not going to be something that you're going to show up as your best self for.

Ways to pace yourself:

Repurpose content

Give yourself a break

Balance your content (You don't have to be everywhere all at once.)

Create a minimum goal

Don’t beat yourself up if you don't meet a goal

You don't have to put out three pieces of long form pillar content every single week, especially when you don't have any help yet. I think if you can stick to putting out one piece of new content every single week, that is a great start. 

Don’t overthink your content. If you want to start a YouTube channel and share videos on YouTube, you don't need a fancy studio. You just need to share value and use your phone or a basic camera. 

How can you simplify so that you can amplify? How can you simplify your content creation process so that you can amplify your results? 

#3 | Plan Ahead

If you've been following me for any length of time, you'll know this is something that I love and that I preach. I don't know about you, but I cannot function when I don't have a plan, especially when it comes to content creation. 

I've really made it a point to plan things within a 90 day period. Every quarter I have my entire plan of content mapped out and I try and batch as much of that content in advance as I can. 

But most importantly with this tip is: I want you to start small. I want you to just start off by outlining your macro content. This is your long form pillar content. 

Create an idea for a blog, podcast, or a video, pick which one you thrive in the most and plan it out for the next month. If you're doing one piece of pillar content a week, then that's four ideas you need to come up with. 

Pick a day that we are going to be publishing content. Tuesdays through Thursdays are usually the best days for posting content because people are a little bit more attentive than they are on a Monday or a Friday.

Set aside time to brainstorm ideas. 

This doesn't have to be difficult. They don't have to be complicated, they don't have to be final, this isn't set in stone. But the point is that you are working towards something. You have some sort of plan so that going forward you can stay consistent. If you miss a week, you’ll be ok; the most important thing is that you are planning ahead and you're doing it strategically. 

#4 | Start a Series

Create content in different series. This will boost your consistency and reduce the amount of time and energy you're putting into your content.

Content creation is all about optimisation. It's all about being strategic with it, figuring out how to do it more efficiently, how to spend less time putting out content of a higher quality and make a bigger impact. 

One of the ways you can really nail this is by using the model that mainstream media uses. We see this in movies when they put out sequels - they're not trying to tell a story in a single 90 minute or two hour sitting. They are telling the story progressively through different movies and TV shows. It's the exact same process.

You also see this in breaking news. When there's something that's really important, you'll notice that they will address it from multiple areas. They'll bring in experts, they'll have people debate over the topic and then they'll cover it live and then they'll cover the aftermath and the followup.

So really just talking about the same topic, but breaking it down into smaller bite sized pieces or looking at it from different perspectives and with a different lens can make a huge difference for your consistency.

Your audience will probably really appreciate it as well, because then they get to consume it in smaller bite size pieces. They don't have to consume it all in one go all in one long chunk. Plus, as the creator, you get to spend way less time brainstorming and coming up with new ideas and topics. It's a lot easier to break things down into smaller chunks. 

Ask yourself:

Can you break this topic down in seven to 10 steps? Would you be able to tell me what those steps were? 

Can you dive deeper into a topic? 

Could you create a video on this first step? 

How can you be more detailed about the second step?

Yeah, this is a lot to remember. Which is why I created a 3-Month Content Calendar Template. Click the image below to download it so that you always stay on track with your content creation:

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

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[andrewdburton]

The power of focus: Why you should tackle one goal at a time

I used to be the sort of guy who loved to have a list of goals. At least once a year — usually around New Year — I'd sit down and make a list of all the things that were wrong with me, all of the things I wanted to change.

In 2007, for instance, I made a list of 101 things I wanted to accomplish in 1001 days. (It took me longer than three years to finish that list, by the way. In fact, I still haven't done everything on it because my priorities have changed. But now, ten years later, I see that I have completed nearly all of the ones that still matter.)

Eventually I realized that making a long lists of resolutions is a sure path to disappointment — at least for me. There's a reason you see newspaper and TV stories every spring about how most people aren't able to maintain the resolutions they set at the first of the year. It's because most of us try to do too much. (And, I think, because we try to set goals that aren't truly aligned with our primary purpose in life.)

Nowadays, I do something different, something that's actually proven to be successful. Instead of trying to change many things at once, I've learned to change only one thing at a time.

One Thing at a Time

In 2010, for instance, I focused on fitness. In fact, I dubbed 2010 “The Year of Fitness”. My aim was to lose fifty pounds. Every decision I made, I made with that goal in mind. You know what? It worked. Though I didn't lose fifty pounds that year, I did lose forty. (And I lost the final ten by the middle of 2011.)

I was able to do this because for the entire year, my only goal was to get in shape. I was focused. Nothing else mattered. I didn't have any other big goals clouding my view or competing for my attention. I set one goal, and I worked hard to meet it.

In 2011, my one goal was to learn Spanish. And I did it. Three times a week, I paid a Spanish tutor for ninety minutes of personal instruction. In my spare time, I watched Spanish movies and listend to Spanish music. I read Spanish books. I consumed Spanish podcasts. Within a year, I'd achieved reasonable fluency in the language. I could carry on converstations in South America, and I could read Spanish-language novels. (Though not all Spanish-language novels.)

In 2012, I tried something a little different. Instead of one big goal for the year, I chose to work on one goal each month. Some examples:

In March, I had lunch or dinner with a different friend every day. This let me reconnect with people I'd been missing.

In April, I embarked upon my Extreme Dating Project. I'd just been divorced, and my goal was to meet as many women as possible. (April was a fun month! And it led to my current relationship with Kim.)

Next, my goal became to make it to the gym every day in May. I didn't quite succeed — I only worked out 28 out of 31 days — but I came close.

My next goal was “no junk in June”. I focused on my diet, which helped me lose five pounds and two percent body fat.

Sometimes I spend a year on any given goal. Sometimes, I spend a month. And sometimes I spend even longer! After Kim and I decided we wanted to take an RV trip across the United States, for instance, I spent the next eighteen months devoted to that project.

During the first part of 2015, we shopped for and purchased a motorhome, then prepped it for life on the road. We left Portland on 25 March 2015 and spent the next six months exploring the U.S. We paused for six months in Savannah, Georgia, before beginning our homeward journey this time last year. On 29 June 2016, we made it back to Portland. We had a blast — because for those eighteen months, we were committed to one thing and one thing only.

You get the idea. At any given time, I'm concerned with only one major goal.

One Problem, One Correction

My friend (and personal trainer) Cody espouses the “one thing at a time” philosophy when he works with clients at his gym. Here's how he describes his approach:

One of the teaching skills that is developed in good coaches is the concept of “one fault, one correction”. The idea is to take the most important correction needed and just focus on that one thing. Attack it from different angles if needed, but be tenacious on correcting the biggest fault only. Once that has been achieved, the Coach and Athlete can move on to the next biggest fault, then the next and so on, in a never-ending journey toward excellence.

Cody says that by focusing on one thing at a time, you can:

Obtain greater focus. When you try to correct more than one thing at once, it's easy to become distracted. You can't do any one thing well because you're trying to do many things poorly. But if you concentrate on a single goal, you're able to obtain a laser-like focus that better helps you achieve that objective.

Reduce stress. If tackle too much at once, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. It seems like you'll never get it all done. When you focus on one thing at a time, you know that's the only thing you have to worry about. This relieves a lot of pressure.

Build confidence. “Honing in on one challenge and overcoming it can give you a tremendous feeling of success,” Cody says. This boosts your belief that you can overcome other obstacles. When you kick ass on your first goal, you know you can kick ass on the next one.

Cody puts this philosophy into practice every day in the gym. He uses it when coaching me on squats, for example. When I started at his gym, my form was awful. I couldn't do an actual squat — not even without weight. By correcting one thing at a time, I made great progress. (At my peak, I could backsquat 245 pounds, which was 150% of my body weight!)

The myth of multitasking and the magic of single-tasking are well known. Study after study after study has demonstrated that when we try to do more than one thing at once, quality and quantity both suffer. It's much better to finish one thing before tackling a second. (Did you know that those who claim they're best at multi-tasking are actually worst? It's true!)

Exercise: Here's one of my favorite demonstrations of how multitasking hinders rather than helps. Grab a pen, a piece of paper, and a stopwatch. First, time yourself as you write the alphabet from A to Z followed by the numbers 1 to 26. Next, time yourself as you alternate between writing the letters and numbers, putting them each in their respective columns (or rows): “A 1 B 2 C 3”. When I tried this just now, it took me 30.49 seconds to complete the first pass (with no errors). It took me 43.57 seconds to complete the second pass (with one error — I wrote F instead of 5.)

In his book The ONE Thing, entrepreneur Gary Keller advocates relentless focus on a single goal at a time. Specifically, he recommends asking yourself this question: “What's the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Keller writes, “Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus…You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.”

The Bottom Line

I've been using the “one thing at a time” approach for more than seven years now. It's made me happier and more productive. And it's because of this success that I've become such a huge advocate for creating a personal mission statement. When you have a single over-arching purpose, it's so much easier to prioritize the other things in your life.

But I want to point out that I'm not advocating slavish devotion to your one goal. Not at all. While you're pursuing fitness or learning Spanish or traveling the country in an RV, there's still time to work on other areas of your life. And you should constantly strive toward holistic personal growth.

What I'm advocating is choosing one thing that takes priority over all other things, and then sticking to that until you meet your objective. If your aim is to achieve a certain weight or — better yet — to develop a fitness routine, then make sure that is the one thing that never gets pushed aside for other priorities.

Also note that the one thing that's most important to you this year or this month or this week might be different from your personal mission. Or it might be some small subset of that larger goal. My personal mission is all about personal growth and exploration. But this month, my primary aim is to reduce my alcohol consumption. My aim for next month is to — finally! — complete the Get Rich Slowly redesign.

Lastly, I should note that although I've found this strategy effective and I'm writing an entire article advocating it to you, the reader, I still sometimes forget to use it.

One reason I suffered from anxiety this spring is that I had forgotten my own advice to tackle one major goal at a time. I was trying to do too much. My therapist helped me to see that I had unrealistic expectations for myself and that I needed to dial back my ambition.

“Oh yeah,” I thought. “One thing at a time. I need to focus on one thing at a time.” So I am.

The post The power of focus: Why you should tackle one goal at a time appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

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