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Ideas I had to cut but still love
Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it took him to prepare a speech. He responded with the following:
It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
I felt much like this while preparing the topics and slides for Craft + Commerce. A 20 minute talk is a practice in rehearsing, cutting, rehearsing, and cutting some more. Especially for me, who is prone to expanding on ideas a bit more than I should. I need room to elaborate 🙂
But there were a few topics and ideas I still wanted to share with you. Here they are, with links to where I first learned about them.
Google’s 70/20/10 Model
Google uses 70/20/10 as their mathematical model for allocating resources in the company. Here’s how it works: 70% for core products and projects, 20% for new but still related ideas to the core business, and 10% for “moonshots”.
This is where the famous 10% time products came from, like Gmail! This principle is a helpful guide to deciding which tasks/products/projects to spend your time on, whether for a side hustle or full-time business.
Jim Collins Creative Stopwatch
The author of Good to Great has a curious practice for tracking his time and creative focus. Jim carries three stopwatches with him, each with its own purpose. He talks about it in detail on The Tim Ferriss Show.
The first and most important measures his time spent on creative work. That is anything related to his books or seminars, think published or presented. The second is for time teaching and the third is managing the miscellaneous pieces of his business.
Now here’s the breakdown. Jim wants to spend 50% of his time on creative work, 30% on teaching, and 20% on managing. This leads to his personal North Star metric, 1000 creative hours in the past year. Scale as needed 🙂
Similar to Google’s 70-20-10 principle, Jim’s formula emphasizes the time spent on creative work and is a useful guide for deciding how to spend the time you have.
Sean McCabe’s Bonfires on the Beach
This was in the talk until the very end (sorry Sean) because it was such an important metaphor to me. Sean describes the problem most new creators face like trying to build a fire. What happens though is the creator starts too many fires in an attempt to make something, anything happen!
This is a mistake. What inevitably happens is the creator spends too much time running around tending too many small fires. Nothing has the focus and attention needed to thrive.
What every creator needs is the courage to build a single roaring bonfire. Because once that fire is going you can actually leave it be for a stretch, even borrowing some of the fire and energy to start your next little fire and give it the attention it deserves. Listen the episode here.
Books & Courses
I wouldn’t be on stage if it wasn’t for books. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but these are the ones I read, researched, and referenced in the talk. I added courses in the heading, but really there’s only one for me when it comes to this kind of effort, and that’s The Focus Course from Shawn Blanc.
- Make Time
- Deep Work
- Keep Going
- Digital Minimalism
- Atomic Habits
- 168 Hours
- Essentialism
- Off the Clock
- Better Than Before
- The One Thing
- Shawn Blanc’s Focus Course
Videos connected to this talk
Well I am a YouTuber, so of course I’m going to have videos for you! Most of them are mine and related in some way to the ideas I presented on stage. There are also a few for setting up a bullet journal or time tracking if you are interested 🙂
- Growing a YouTube channel to 10k Subscribers
- A Simple Time Tracker
- How to Journal Every Day
- How to set up your First Bullet Journal
- Simple Bullet Journal Tips with Charli
- How to Spend Less Time on Your Phone
- Stephen King and 6 pages a day
- Why You Never Have Enough Time
Impact items
I wanted to share the items I mentioned on stage. A few of them have affiliate links, but it’s the usual “small cut to me with no extra cost to you”.
I just want to add this: any sheet of paper or pen will be fine to start journaling or tracking time. Remember… you have everything you need!
- Baron Fig Journals
- Time Timer
- Timular (great for Jim Collins style tracking)
- Rescue Time
- Timing
- Screen Time settings in iOS
- CMD+Q keys on the Mac
- Airplane Mode
Thanks again
If you read to the end (or skipped here), thanks again! Speaking at Craft + Commerce is a huge honor and I’m grateful to each of you for coming.
Thanks to Nathan for asking me to speak and my wife for supporting me through 40 extra hours of outlining, drawing, rehearsing, and editing the talk. Special shout out to Mike Pacchione for his coaching, made a huge difference and helped me craft the talk you saw.
If you’d like to follow more of my work online, subscribe to emails at the top or follow me on YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram @mattragland. Thanks!