FILM PRODUCER | WRITER | HUSBAND | FATHER
Interruptions kill your creativity and your ability to do deep work. Yesterday I had blocked out the whole morning to focus on editing a single project that’s due by EOD on Thursday. I’ve been a bit behind on it so I needed to make some quick progress. The first interruption was the office manager coming …
Stop using inanimate objects or others as an excuse to not make the thing you say you want to make. Movies can be shot on iPhones and still get into Sundance. Stories are free. Books can be written using a pencil and paper or using a free text app that comes with every computer. Words …
The reason you’re not doing the thing you claim you want to do – starting that new project, changing jobs, getting up early to create – is because your reasons for not doing it are stronger and more convincing that your reasons for doing it. Even fear, one of the strongest reasons for not doing …
I just finished Start With Why this last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought I’d gotten the gist of it from watching his Ted Talk years ago, but turns out you get way more from a book than a 20-minute presentation for a specific audience. The biggest note for me was that a leader …
I was revisiting my notes and comments on Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s book The One Thing this weekend. One thing stood out (see what I did there?) – how easy it is to forget things that we read, or the notes we take, or the ideas we have. If we don’t capture the notes …
You can’t drive on two different roads at the same time. You can’t walk two different paths, let alone two that are heading to different destinations. You certainly can’t walk three, or four, or more. The principle is the same for our creative projects. Somehow, Derek Sivers is coming out with three, THREE books this …
Charles Haanel in his book The Master Key System said, The only value of any principle is in its application. I’ve been studying principles over the last few years, and can attest that knowledge of them doesn’t move the needle at all. Putting them into action is where it’s at. Knowing that writing every day …
A more specific version of this could be “Write the movie you’d pay money to go and see”, or “make an album that you’d spend money to own”. Sometimes we calculate too much. We wonder what is popular right now, what are the trends in our industry? Who are the buyers and what are they …
The quote “we are what we pretend to be” comes from Kurt Vonnegut. Who we are, what we do, it’s all a choice. The same principle surfaced in my Twitter timeline this week from writer/director Christopher McQuarrie: Whatever it is you want to become, be it now. For most of us creatives, there’s nothing stopping …
We often think that only complicated plans are valid plans. To launch a new website, we have to have the perfect design. Not to mention the corresponding logo, tagline, business name, font, color palette, t-shirt, office space, etc., rather than doing the thing we set out to do: launch a website. Rather than writing 1,000 …