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What to Do About That Thing You’ve Been Putting Off

You know how there's something you've been putting off? Maybe you've had it on your to-do list every day for the past fifteen days. Every morning, you think, "I'll finally do that thing today" ... but you don't. The next day, you dutifully carry it over again ... and you still don't complete the task.

Never underestimate the strength of psychic resistance. Dread is a powerful emotion.

I speak from experience, of course. And after I noticed I was spending a ton of energy worrying about something I had to do but not actually doing it—I made a plan. The plan is two-fold, and I offer it here for your use as well.

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How to Get Better at Saying No

Every request you accept comes with a cost.

If you want to be more effective, if you want to "get more done," or even if you just want some breathing room in your life, you need to say no more often.

For some of us, of course, this is easier said than done. The inability to say no is one of the things that contributes the most to overwhelm. It can even lead to feelings of guilt or shame—you feel guilty for “letting someone down” even though you’re struggling to keep up on your own.

What should you say no to? That's up to you! But here's a start: anything that you don't want to do.

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The Great Resignation: If Your Job Sucks, Now Is the Time to Stop Doing It

If you don't like your job, what would happen if you walked away?

I've been asking this question off and on for over a decade. Unless you plan on living forever, why in the world should you devote the majority of your productive hours each week to something you don't enjoy?

All that time, I haven't exactly been speaking into a void. I hear from people almost every day who have followed through on some sort of exit plan.

It's clear, however, that something is different now. Very different. What's different is that millions of people are actually quitting their jobs! Four million Americans just in April 2021, according to government statistics, and many millions since.

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“Idea to Income” Text Message Course Is Live

On yesterday morning’s podcast episode I announced the launch of Idea to Income: a 21-day text and audio-based micro course to help you identify your most profitable idea … all in the palm of your hand.

It's pretty simple: you can enroll in less than a minute. Then, over the next three weeks you’ll receive directions, advice, and practical tips via audio and text message right to your phone, helping you find your best idea.

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Working Hard at Something That Doesn’t Matter

“Our greatest fear should not be failure but succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”

Last year, pre-pandemic, I went to a three-day yoga retreat in Arizona. I'd never done such a thing before and was thinking of signing up for a longer one, so this seemed like a safe introduction.

The yoga itself was good. I enjoyed the classes and met a few nice people.

Among the group of one-hundred or so attendees, I noticed that several of them spent a lot of time working on their selfie game. Some even had a pro photographer in tow, who documented their poses, attempts at acro yoga, and bikini collections.

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How to Write a Novel

First up, thank you so much for your support of THE MONEY TREE! Despite the numerous challenges of current events, the book is getting out to lots of people.

Now that it's out, a number of readers have asked me to explain more about a big change I made. Specifically, my new book is unlike any of my six others: it’s fiction. I created an imaginary world of characters, and did my best to bring them to life.

It started partly because I wanted to do something new. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I felt ... which of course is often a good sign. A sense of nervousness and even feeling a little afraid can be helpful in showing you what you need to do next.

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Find Your Creative Calling: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

9231310911_aa5bd45c35_z Link: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

Life isn’t about “finding” fulfillment and success—it’s about creating it. You don’t discover your life purpose without trying a lot of different things.

But how can you be more creative? How can you cultivate a daily practice of creativity?

The answers to these questions can be found in a new book, Creative Calling. It’s out now and available wherever books are sold, including Amazon of course, but also your local bookseller. (I love to support local stores.)

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168 Hours: What I’ve Learned Tracking Every 15 Minutes of My Week

For the past two weeks I’ve been tracking every 15 minute interval of my life. I’ve borrowed this time-tracking practice from Laura Vanderkam, who writes helpful books including 168 Hours, which outlines the practice in a lot of detail.

One of Laura’s principles is that “you have more time than you think.” Through her research, she’s found that most people who claim to work more than 50 hours a week tend to over report their work hours, sometimes dramatically so. In other words, a lot of the time they think they’re working, they’re not. It’s not just that their priorities are out of order; they also waste a lot of time.

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What Is Your Personal Moonshot?

A moonshot, according to the ubiquitous WikiPedia, is a "is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits.”

For a long time my moonshot was going to every country in the world. Then I accomplished that goal (without ever getting to the actual moon—it's not a country, after all) and had to figure out what came next...

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I’d Like to Hear Your Stories About Failure

In many of the talks I’ve done, I’ve noticed that one topic comes up over and over: failure.

What’s your biggest failure?

Are you afraid to fail?

How are people able to recover from failure?

Even though I have a daily podcast that tells success stories, I believe we can also learn a lot from failure. And here's the thing: I don’t know if the learning objective is always to “bounce back.” Some failures may be, well, permanent.

In any case, I’d like to hear from you. Maybe your failure story will help someone else avoid a similar mishap, or maybe the act of naming it will help you move on.

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Where Do Side Hustle School Stories Come From?

Every day on Side Hustle School, I tell a different true story of someone who creates a new source of income without quitting their job. Sometimes people ask, “Where do the stories come from?"

Great question! Many of them come from our listeners and readers. Do you have a side hustle? If so, I’d love to hear about it! We’ll feature some of the stories far and wide to 40,000 daily listeners.

—>Tell Us About Your Side Hustle 

If you don’t have a project like this yourself but know someone who does, will you send them this link? Maybe we can help them get more business, and they can also help a lot of people by sharing their story with people who are starting out.

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201 More Stories of People with Day Jobs Creating Side Hustles

Listen to Side Hustle School:
-in iTunes or Stitcher
-on the website
On January 1, I began a new project: to share a story every day of someone who starts an income-generating project (a "side hustle") without quitting their day job.

The project failed and I decided to give up. Just kidding! We are relentlessly moving along, publishing story after story—and it's getting better and better!

I recently completed the first 100 200 300 days. There's much more to come, but I'm excited about everything I've learned since beginning back in January.

If you're just joining in, you can also catch up on any recent episode from the links below.

Download all episodes from each month:

JAN | FEB | MARCH | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT

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